The Big Answer to Wrangling Oil Spills Could Be in This Tiny Mesh

[Omaha Steve]

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Inspired by a lotus leaf, researchers have come up with a potentially powerful solution to saving ocean life after a petroleum disaster.



Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo: Getty Images)


http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/17/could-weird-metal-mesh-stop-future-exxon-valdez-disaster

April 17, 2015 By Taylor Hill

Taylor Hill is TakePart's associate environment and wildlife editor.


With nearly a quarter of America’s oil delivered by oceangoing tankers and hundreds of offshore rigs pumping crude from below the seafloor, oil and water do mix, with unfortunate regularity.

When they do, the environmental impacts can be devastating, and the cleanup a decades-long endeavor.

So it’s hard to believe that a tiny piece of stainless-steel mesh sitting in a lab could be the answer to reducing the messes left behind by oil spills.

But that’s just what its inventors, scientists at Ohio State University, claim to be true. They say the material traps oil but lets water pass through, thanks to a nontoxic, oil-repelling coating on its surface.



This mesh, which is covered in a coating invented at The Ohio State University, captures oil (red) while water (blue) passes through. (Photo: Jo McCulty/Ohio State University)

FULL story at link.