(Press-News.org) With the Deepwater Horizon disaster emphasizing the need for better ways of cleaning up oil spills, scientists are reporting that unprocessed, raw cotton may be an ideal, ecologically friendly answer, with an amazing ability to sop up oil. Their report, which includes some of the first scientific data on unprocessed, raw cotton's use in crude oil spills, appears in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Seshadri Ramkumar and colleagues note that a particular need exists for oil-spill sorbents that are abundantly available at relatively low cost, sustainable and biodegradable. There have been extensive studies on fibers such as barley straw, kapok and wool — but big gaps in knowledge about their basic crude oil-uptake mechanisms and no data on unprocessed raw cotton. Ramkumar's team decided to fill those gaps with research on the oil sorption properties of low micronaire cotton, a form of unprocessed cotton with relatively less commercial value.
They report that each pound of the material has the ability to sop up and hold more than 30 pounds of crude oil. The cotton fibers take up oil in multiple ways, including both absorption and adsorption (in which oil sticks to the outer surface of the cotton fiber). "In contrast to synthetic sorbents, raw cotton with its high crude oil sorption capacity and positive environmental footprint make it an ecologically friendly sorbent for oil spill cleanups," the report
concludes.
###
The authors acknowledge funding from the Texas State Support Program of Cotton Incorporated and The CH Foundation.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Follow us: Twitter Facebook END
Cotton offers a new ecologically friendly way to clean up oil spills
2013-05-15
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Friction in the nano-world
2013-05-15
This news release is available in German.
Friction is an omnipresent but often annoying physical phänomenon: It causes wear and energy loss in machines as well as in our joints. In search of low-friction components for ever smaller components, a team of physicists led by the professors Thorsten Hugel and Alexander Holleitner now discovered a previously unknown type of friction that they call “desorption stick.”
The researchers examined how and why single polymer molecules in various solvents slide over or stick to certain surfaces. Their goal was to understand ...
Groundwater unaffected by shale gas production in Arkansas
2013-05-15
DURHAM, N.C. -- A new study by scientists at Duke University and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) finds no evidence of groundwater contamination from shale gas production in Arkansas.
"Our results show no discernible impairment of groundwater quality in areas associated with natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing in this region," said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
The scientists sampled 127 shallow drinking water wells in areas overlying Fayetteville Shale gas production in north-central ...
Keeping fruit, vegetables and cut flowers fresh longer
2013-05-15
New technology offers the promise of reducing billions of dollars of losses that occur each year from the silent, invisible killer of fruits, vegetables and cut flowers — a gas whose effects are familiar to everyone who has seen bananas and other fruit ripen too quickly and rot. That's the conclusion of an article in the ACS journal Chemical Reviews.
Nicolas Keller, Marie-Noëlle Ducamp, Didier Robert and Valérie Keller explain that fruits, vegetables and flowers are still alive after harvest. They produce and release into the air ethylene gas, which fosters ripening ...
Making frequency-hopping radios practical
2013-05-15
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The way in which radio spectrum is currently allocated to different wireless technologies can lead to gross inefficiencies. In some regions, for instance, the frequencies used by cellphones can be desperately congested, while large swaths of the broadcast-television spectrum stand idle.
One solution to that problem is the 15-year-old idea of "cognitive radio," in which wireless devices would scan their environments for vacant frequencies and use these for transmissions. Different proposals for cognitive radio place different emphases on hardware and software, ...
Safer, more environmentally friendly flame retardant with first-of-its-kind dual effects
2013-05-15
Amid concerns over the potential health effects of existing flame retardants for home furniture, fabrics and other material, scientists are reporting development of an "exceptionally" effective new retardant that appears safer and more environmentally friendly. Their report on the first-of-its-kind coating, ideal for the polyurethane foam in couches and bedding that causes many fire deaths, appears in ACS Macro Letters.
Jaime Grunlan and colleagues explain that upholstery furniture and mattresses are the items that ignite in about 17,000 fires each year, causing more ...
Maps developed to help forest industry outwit climate change
2013-05-15
University of Alberta researchers have developed guidelines being used by foresters and the timber industry to get a jump on climate change when planting trees.
Maps developed by Laura Gray, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Renewable Resources, provide projections of climatically suitable habitat for tree species based on climate predictions for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s.
The work, published recently in the journal Climatic Change, is the first of its kind to tackle multiple potential climate scenarios for a large number of tree species across Western North ...
Terracotta and cement roofs vulnerable in wildfires, NIST study finds
2013-05-15
VIDEO:
The NIST Dragon firebrand generator in action.
Click here for more information.
Although made of fire-resistant materials, terracotta and cement roof tiles are vulnerable to penetration by windblown embers generated in wildfires, according to new research findings* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
In scoping experiments conducted in the Fire Research Wind Tunnel Facility at Japan's Building Research Institute, NIST fire scientist Samuel Manzello ...
Squishy hydrogels may be the ticket for studying biological effects of nanoparticles
2013-05-15
A class of water-loving, jelly-like materials with uses ranges ranging from the mundane, such as superabsorbent diaper liners, to the sophisticated, such as soft contact lenses, could be tapped for a new line of serious work: testing the biological effects of nanoparticles now being eyed for a large variety of uses.
New research* by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrates that three-dimensional scaffolds made with cells and supporting materials known as hydrogels can serve as life-like measurement platforms for evaluating how ...
NIST demonstrates significant improvement in the performance of solar-powered hydrogen generation
2013-05-15
Using a powerful combination of microanalytic techniques that simultaneously image photoelectric current and chemical reaction rates across a surface on a micrometer scale, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have shed new light on what may become a cost-effective way to generate hydrogen gas directly from water and sunlight.*
Their quarry is a potentially efficient, cost-effective, photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell—essentially a solar cell that produces hydrogen gas instead of electric current. "A major challenge with solar energy is ...
NASA sees activity continue on the sun
2013-05-15
Solar activity continued on May 14, 2013, as the sun emitted a fourth X-class flare from its upper left limb, peaking at 9:48 p.m. EDT.
This flare is classified as an X1.2 flare and it is the 18th X-class flare of the current solar cycle. The flare caused a radio blackout – categorized as an R3, or strong, on NOAA's space weather scales from R1 to R5 -- which has since subsided.
The flare was also associated with a non-Earth-directed CME. CMEs and flares are separate but related solar phenomena: solar flares are powerful bursts that send light and radiation into space; ...