Despite the growing prevalence of alternative energy worldwide, oil is still a vastly popular energy source. Oil drilling comes with many hazards including oil spills, spills which have become a focus of many environmental groups especially in light if many major spills recently. While oil spill hazards are commonplace offshore, such as the Gulf of Mexico, what concerns many is the increasing presence of oil drilling in the Arctic.
Unlike many other locations popular for offshore oil drilling, such as the Gulf of Mexico, the conditions in the Arctic are much more harsh. High seas, high winds, long distances from rescue operations and a plethora of other perils lurk in the Arctic. However, one of the greatest dangers seen to drilling for oil in the Arctic is the potential for spills. A spill would be much more difficult to clean in the Arctic and as seen by other spills, like the BP spill in 2010 in the U.S., even spills in other parts of the globe face difficulties as well.
Current oil cleanup methods are below standards many in the field would like to see, however, there is potential for a major break in the field. A team of scientists recently created a soap which may potentially greatly assist in oil cleanup, how far in the future is unknown. The creation has many in the field buzzing that the soap could greatly reduce the difficulty in collecting oil in the water and on shorelines.
The soap was recently featured in a report in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The scientists worked with detergent molecules which are found in everyday products. In hopes of making the soap magnetic, the team added iron atoms to the detergent molecules. While the individual atoms of iron are not magnetic in the soap, they do combine together to act in the presence of a magnet. Therefore, these soap molecules with iron added have the potential to attach to oil, dissolve it and then be removed through magnetism.
The scientists are still working on the magnetized detergent in the lab but are hopeful that their findings could be used in oil spill cleanups and even in waste water treatment in the future.
