2023-09-06 テキサス大学オースチン校(UT Austin)
◆実験では、1平方メートル当たり1,400キログラムの粘性のある油を1時間で回収できる可能性が示され、現在のクリーンアップ方法よりも10倍高い効率を持つことが明らかになりました。これにより、油流出のクリーンアップ作業が数日で完了し、現行の数週間に及ぶ作業と比較して効率的に行えます。
◆研究者たちは、これによって収集された油をリサイクルおよび再利用することも可能と述べています。この技術は、環境に与える影響を最小限に抑えるために非常に重要であり、今後の油流出事故のクリーンアップに向けた新たなアプローチを提供するものです。
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.utexas.edu/2023/09/06/oil-capturing-technology-offers-10x-improvement-cleaning-up-hazardous-spills/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01217-2
ゲル被覆メッシュフィルターで粘性流出油の高スループット浄化を実現 High-throughput clean-up of viscous oil spills enabled by a gel-coated mesh filter
Ke Yan,Fei Zhao,Lijia Pan,Yongchang Jiang,Yi Shi & Guihua Yu
Nature Sustainability Published:04 September 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01217-2
Abstract
Crude oil spills, resulting from transportation, drilling or accident, are a severe threat to the aqueous environment. However, crude oil with high viscosity makes the clean-up of oil spills a global challenge in practice because highly viscous oil has low fluidity, making it hard to separate and recover. Here we demonstrate a gel-coated superhydrophobic and oleophilic mesh filter coupled with induction-heating strategy for high-throughput clean-up of viscous oil spill. The direct silane treatment of polyaniline gel with covalent reaction endows the material with robust superwetting properties, which enables the mesh filter to have a high viscous oil separation flux of 2.43 l m−2 s−1. An oil-collecting roller prototype is developed for the recovery of viscous oil spills through the reversibly interfacial process of oil collection and filtration. The continuous clean-up and recovery of viscous oil spills are simultaneously achieved with a high oil recovery rate of up to 1,400.6 kg m−2 h−1 and a separation efficiency of 99%. This work provides a powerful tool for efficient and high-throughput clean-up of highly viscous oil spills, paving the way to better management of the damage from oil spills.
