Easy-To-Clean Membrane Separates Oil From Water 39
ckwu writes: A steel mesh with a novel self-cleaning coating can separate oil and water, easily lifting oil from an oil-water mixture and leaving the water behind. Unlike existing oil-water separation membranes, if the coated mesh gets contaminated with oil, it can be simply rinsed off with water and reused, without needing to be cleaned with detergents. The team was able to use the mesh to lift crude oil from a crude oil-seawater mixture, showcasing the feasibility of oil-spill cleanup. The membrane could also be used to treat oily wastewater and as a protective barrier in industrial sewer outlets to avoid oil discharge.
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Apparently these evil overlords calling themselves scientists aren't following entry 12 of the evil overlord list.
Specifically keeping a 5 year old child on staff to spot these glaringly obvious fatal flaws in their evil schemes.
Good thing though. Virtuous hero AC here can exploit that flaw and save us from their evil oil-seawater separation plot.
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Right, it doesn't make sense unless it's used as a filter rather than as a sponge. Which it is.
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It's like Teflon which nothing sticks to it yet somehow manages to stick onto the pan. The same scientists made this stuff.
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You could in theory have boats drag a say 20 foot deep by hundreds of feet long "curtain" of the stuff and make it into a closed loop. Then you slowly compress it by winding it like a clock spring while being careful not to let any out. The oil would get thicker around the top and it's weight would gradually press the cleaner water downwards. You could then "scoop".
Maybe a large square shape with a moving wall would be easier.
Re:This doesn't make sense. (Score:4, Funny)
Aparently you have no idea what a filter is. Just reverse the flow and all the filtered material comes back out.
Whooo Spooky Magic!
The real market is defracking your well water. (Score:3)
I bet a lot of people who have contaminated well water thanks to fracking are going to love this!
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If fracking contaminated well water with oil, I'm sure they would. Unfortunately, the claim is that fracking contaminates well water with fracking compounds used by the driller, not the oil. This does them no good at all.
Defracking? Is that a thing? (Score:2)
If fracking contaminated well water with oil, I'm sure they would. Unfortunately, the claim is that fracking contaminates well water with fracking compounds used by the driller, not the oil. This does them no good at all.
Quite right... the water wells are seldom contaminated with oil. Salty production water, carcinogenic solvents, and as yet mystery fracking chemicals are much more common invaders of the fresh water table due to drilling activities.
Every well drilled for oil/gas exploitation travels through the water table to get to the energy reservoir. There is an industry practice of casing these wells with concrete to below where the water table ends, altruistically protecting the water table from the well.
Consider th
Then what (Score:2)
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You sell it to McDonalds for French Fry grease.
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This would work if the filter takes out more oil than it requires to wash it off. Oil sticks to polymer, other oil is attracted to the oil skin more than the water and the skin grows. Forced water overcomes the polymer bias. The resultant sludge is then treated like water polluted oil instead.
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What am i missing
Perhaps it takes a lot less wash water than the amount that is cleaned per cycle. Typical of many filtering systems.
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Yeah, won't someone think of saving all that potable seawater. Wait...what?
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But they are getting oil out of this deal, and they love oil!
Will Never Be Used in the United States (Score:3)
US law requires that all oil collected by vacuum ships be brought to a processing facility, where 100% of all oil must be removed prior to the water being discharged.
During the Deepwater Horizon disaster, there were serious delays in the US accepting offers of help from the Netherlands and other nations. Most of them came with a price tag, but the Dutch offered three sets of Koseq Rigid Sweeping Arms for free. Because they were only 98% efficient, and they were initially refused.
However, common sense (and desperation) won out in the end, and we started accepting all the offers for free equipment that came in, including the Dutch offer.
Reference article [politifact.com]
Re:Will Never Be Used in the United States (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to re-read your "reference article" all the way through, including the editorial comment after the article's end. It doesn't seem to contain the details you state.
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How It Works (Score:5, Informative)
The coating lives water and repels oil. Pull it thru an oil-water mix and the water flows thru the holes but the oil doesn't.
Pull it out and it contains a puddle of oil. Rinse it with a little water and the oil comes right off, ready for reuse.
This isn't that uncommon in these types of filters. What is new is that this works dry. Other filters of this type have to be thoroughly wet before they work. This one is oleophobic when dry as well. So no fancy prep to get it to work.
Filters on the shelf? (Score:2)
> if the coated mesh gets contaminated with oil
If I filter oil, the mesh gets oily. What's the reason for the 'if'?
Removing oil from seawater (Score:1)
Wasn't this necessity already solved by a competition a few years back? There was an X-prize competition where several groups tested methods of removing oil from seawater. The winner by a large margin (industry standard was 1,100 gallons per minute, goal of competition was 2,500 gpm, they achieved almost twice that) was a simple concept of large rotating grooved disks of plastic, the oil would adhere to the plastic long enough to be scraped off and diverted to a holding tank. It removed far more oil than
How about a kitchen version? (Score:1)