Should there be an oilspill, small or big, it always cause environmental concern. We have noticed it from Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989) and more recently in the Gulf of Mexico in the 2010. Rightly so, T.C. Mike Chung of Penn State University, USA with his colleague have been motivated to come up with a novel idea that will change the conventional use of skimmers and booms to clean-up oil from the surface of a river or an ocean after an oil-spill.
Professor Chung and his collegaue Xuepei Yuan designed a terpolymer from oil molecules to synthesize a supreabsorbent polymer (SAP) which can absorb oil up to 45 times their weight. How the Oil-SAP works? The polymer (Oil-SAP) has aliphatic and aromatic side chains which have similar solubility parameters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildebrand_solubility_parameter) with the hydrocarbons in crude oil. While 1-octene and styrene allows fast absorption, by manipulating cross-linking density of the oil-SAP terpolymer, latter controls the capacity of oil uptake. The bulk side chain of the polymer (containing di-vinyl benzene) has lower ceiling temperature for depolymerization which helps in recovering the oil through regular oil-refining process. Furthermore, this technology uses polymer from polyolefin family, the most inexpensive polymer.
The question remains how quickly the industry will recognize the promise of oil-SAP technology for its recovery of spilled oil than of its disposal!
[Reference: X. Yusn and T.C. Mike Chung; Energy Fuels, 26 (8), pp. 4896-4902 (2012). DOI: 10.1021/ef300388h]
