High-tech fabric could help mop up major oil spills

The explosion and sinking of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico six years ago resulted in what is considered the largest marine oil spill in history. But that catastrophe jump-started efforts by scientists the world over to find better ways to extract oil from water.

The latest development comes from a team of Australian researchers that has created a multipurpose fabric it claims could mop up oil spills not only on sea and land, but even in the kitchen.

“This fabric repels water and attracts oil,” said Anthony O’Mullane, an associate professor of Chemistry at Queensland University of Technology. “We have tested it and found it effective at cleaning up crude oil, and separating organic solvents, ordinary olive and peanut oil from water.”

O’Mullane noted his team of researchers successfully used the fabric to mop up crude oil from the surface of both fresh and salt water.

The scientists took commercially available nylon seeded with a layer of silver and coated it with copper. They then grew tiny rods, called nanostructures, on the fabric’s surface, turning it into a semi-conductor that attracts oil to the rods while water runs off. They were particularly excited by the fabric’s self-cleaning, antibacterial properties, as well as its ability to separate water from other liquids, which greatly expands its range of applications, they say.

“Its antibacterial properties arising from the presence of copper could be used to kill bugs while also separating water from industrial waste in waterways or decontaminate water in remote and poor communities where water contamination is an issue,” O’Mullane said.

Researchers will put the fabric through more durability testing before scaling up to tackle larger environmental messes—or even kitchen ones.