Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with the University of Lille (France) have developed a new material capable of purifying water effectively from oil products. It is based on an ordinary household polyurethane sponge. The research team made it superhydrophobic – it repels water, while effectively sorbing oil product molecules. The results were published in Separation and Purification Technology (IF: 5,107; Q1).
“New oil production methods, especially the ones related to production on the seabed and ocean floor, raise up the risk of spills. We all know about the environmental impact of the accident that happened on a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Therefore, one of the most urgent scientific problems is to obtain selective sorbents capable to extract oil products from a water-oil mixture, avoiding interactions with water.
The latter point is crucially important since interactions with water basically result in some resultant products to end up in the water and affect the ecosystem. Furthermore, water saturation drops the sorbent effectiveness. Therefore, we had to find affordable material and make it hydrophobic and efficient for the mentioned goal. We decided in favor of a regular washing sponge,” Pavel Postnikov, associate professor at TPU Research School of Chemistry & Applied Biomedical Sciences, says.
Read more at Tomsk Polytechnic University
Image: The material samples (Credit: TPU)