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October 18, 2023

Organic acid connects oil and magnets

Prof. Halik looks to the future: "Together with industrial partners, we now want to transfer the process to a technical scale as part of a start-up." For this purpose, for example, inexpensive methods for separating the oil have to be developed, for example by evaporating or burning the oil, by centrifuging or by using very strong magnetic fields. A modified form of the process could also be suitable for removing other environmental toxins from water.
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December 26, 2022

Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion triggered one of the largest man-made marine oil spills to date. 84 km off the coast of the US state Louisiana, up to 1 million tons of crude oil entered the Gulf of Mexico. The oil company BP paid more than $65 billion in fines to government agencies, damaged companies and private individuals, as well as for cleaning work.
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December 26, 2022

Chemical dispersion.. remained the method of choice

Chemical dispersion, the breaking up of the oil slick into small droplets with the help of so-called dispersants, remained the method of choice. The finely-divided oil sinks below the surface of the water and is then - at least according to the theory - broken down by microorganisms faster than the dense oil film on the surface of the water. Critics complain, however, that the constituents of the dispersants - e.g. petroleum-like solvents and salts of organic sulfonic acids, such as those used in synthetic cleaning agents - are sometimes more toxic than the crude oil components themselves, and that the dispersion makes the oil less visible. In fact, research vessels later located huge plumes of oil in deep areas of the Gulf of Mexico that had hardly been attacked by microorganisms.
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December 22, 2022

The FAU researchers use a clever trick

Of course, oil isn't magnetic. So the FAU researchers use a clever trick: They designed tiny magnetic particles to which oil adheres so tightly that an electromagnet with the particles also fishes the oil out of the water. Marco Sarcletti, who was doing his master's thesis on the subject, describes the process in more detail: “We use nanoparticles made of magnetite that are surrounded by self-assembling monolayers made of alkylphosphonic acids.
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December 22, 2022

Organic acid connects oil and magnets

Prof. Halik looks to the future: "Together with industrial partners, we now want to transfer the process to a technical scale as part of a start-up." For this purpose, for example, inexpensive methods for separating the oil have to be developed, for example by evaporating or burning the oil, by centrifuging or by using very strong magnetic fields. A modified form of the process could also be suitable for removing other environmental toxins from water.
Read More