URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Winter_2015_Melissa-McCarthy

Tiny Weapons Nanoparticles Combat Big Oil Spills

by Chris Barrett ’08

After more than two years of research, engineering and chemistry professors are finding success using nanoparticles to clean up disastrous oil spills.

More than 47,000 people, 9,700 ships and 127 planes spent months mopping up oil released during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Yet, more than four years later, the tools to fight offshore oil spills remain remarkably rudimentary. Now a team of University of Rhode Island (URI) engineering and chemistry professors is demonstrating novel approaches that could change the way we battle oil spills. The approach relies on nanoparticles, each about a hundred times thinner than a strand of human hair. To study how these tiny particles can clean up oil, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative has awarded more than $1.4 million to URI Engineering Professors Arijit Bose, Geoffrey Bothun, and Vinka Oyanedel- Craver, along with URI Chemistry Assistant Professor Mindy

Levine and Metcalf Institute Executive Director Sunshine Menezes. The team has published numerous papers in academic journals and small-scale pilot projects are being explored to evaluate the potential for commercialization. “On the downside, the Deepwater Horizon spill happened,” Bothun says. “On the upside, it motivated a lot of engineers and scientists to come up with new ways to fight oil spills.” The professors are taking complementary approaches to stop oil from forming globs that threaten wildlife and wash up on beaches. To emulsify the oil (break it into small droplets) and make it attractive to oil-eating microorganisms, Bothun has turned to silica, and Bose and Levine to carbon black, a substance produced by incomplete combustion of petroleum products.

The University of Rhode Island { momentum: Research & Innovation }

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