“The secret to cleaning up contaminated water may lie in the cheap, common polyurethane foam used in mattresses. In a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability this week, scientists tested the ability of the material, enhanced with a special coating, to soak up tiny droplets of oil suspended in water. They found that it consistently captured almost all of the oil in under three hours.”
“The sponge could help address water contamination from the oil and gas industry. From catastrophic oil spills like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident, to the thousands of smaller spills that occur each year, to the more than 100 billion barrels of toxic wastewater produced annually from fracking, the scale of the issue is alarming, especially given how limited the available technology is to clean it up.”
“Cherukupally’s sponge was designed to recover micrometer-sized droplets of crude oil that get dispersed in the ocean after oil spills and leaks, as well as in wastewater from fracking. Fracking involves pumping millions of gallons of chemical-laden water deep into the ground. The water opens up cracks in the rock, letting oil and gas seep out. Then it returns to the surface more toxic than before, and there’s no good way to clean it up. Often companies will inject it deep underground if state law allows. The EPA is considering letting companies start discharging it into waterways. For now, if it’s not injected, it gets moved into storage tanks or ponds and sits there. There is technology capable of remediating this water, but it’s too energy intensive and expensive to be used at scale.”
View the whole story here: https://grist.org/energy/this-very-special-sponge-could-help-clean-up-frackings-mess/