(Press-News.org) The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes a report demonstrating that unprocessed, raw cotton has an amazing ability to sop up oil while also being eco-friendly.
Based on a report by Seshadri Ramkumar, Ph.D., in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from http://www.acs.org/globalchallenges.
In light of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, Ramkumar notes that a particular need exists for oil-spill sorbents that are abundantly available at relatively low cost. They also should be sustainable and biodegradable. There have been extensive studies on fibers such as barley straw, kapok and wool — but big gaps in knowledge about how they take up crude oil, and no data on unprocessed raw cotton.
Ramkumar's team decided to fill those gaps with research on "low micronaire" cotton, a form of unprocessed cotton with relatively less commercial value.
They report that each pound of the cotton has the ability to sop up and hold more than 30 pounds of crude oil. "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.
INFORMATION:
Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of the 21st century's most daunting problems, and how cutting-edge research in chemistry matters in the quest for solutions. Global Challenges is the centerpiece in an alliance on sustainability between ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Global Challenges is a sweeping panorama of global challenges that includes dilemmas such as providing a hungry and thirsty world with ample supplies of safe food and clean water, developing alternatives to petroleum to fuel society, preserving the environment and ensuring a sustainable future for our children and improving human health.
For more entertaining, informative science videos and podcasts from the ACS Office of Public Affairs, view Prized Science, Spellbound, Science Elements and Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions.
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
Does life exist elsewhere or is our planet unique, making us truly alone in the universe? Much of the work carried out by NASA, together with other research institutions, is aimed at trying to come to grips with this question.
A novel and potentially testable theory of how life arose on earth, first advanced more than 25 years ago by Michael Russell, a research scientist in Planetary Chemistry and Astrobiology at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was further developed in a recent paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (PTRSL-B)—the world's ...
About half of a small group of patients with fibromyalgia – a common syndrome that causes chronic pain and other symptoms – was found to have damage to nerve fibers in their skin and other evidence of a disease called small-fiber polyneuropathy (SFPN). Unlike fibromyalgia, which has had no known causes and few effective treatments, SFPN has a clear pathology and is known to be caused by specific medical conditions, some of which can be treated and sometimes cured. The study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers will appear in the journal Pain and has been ...
A technique for trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide deep underground could at the same be used to release the last fraction of natural gas liquids from ailing reservoirs, thus offsetting some of the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels. So says a paper to be published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology.
While so-called "fracking" as a method for extracting previously untapped fossil fuel reserves has been in the headlines recently, there are alternatives to obtaining the remaining quantities of hydrocarbons from gas/condensate ...
Santa's workshop at the North Pole is not under water, despite recent reports. A dramatic image captured by a University of Washington monitoring buoy reportedly shows a lake at the North Pole. But Santa doesn't yet need to buy a snorkel.
"Every summer when the sun melts the surface the water has to go someplace, so it accumulates in these ponds," said Jamie Morison, a polar scientist at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and principal investigator since 2000 of the North Pole Environmental Observatory. "This doesn't look particularly extreme."
After media coverage in ...
Writer: Emil Venere, (765) 494-4709, venere@purdue.edu
Sources: Shirley Dyke, 765-494-7434, sdyke@purdue.edu
Related Web sites:
NEES: http://www.nees.org
PHOTO CAPTION:
Earthquake-engineering researches at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China work to set up a structure on a shake table for experiments to study the effects of earthquakes. Purdue University civil engineering students are working with counterparts at the institute to study the reliability of models for testing a type of powerful damping system that might be installed in buildings and bridges ...
It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable "runaway greenhouse" stage, according to new research by astronomers at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria published July 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
In the runaway greenhouse stage, a planet absorbs more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium. As a result, the world overheats, boiling its oceans and filling its atmosphere with steam, which leaves the planet glowing-hot and forever uninhabitable, as Venus is now.
One ...
An international collaboration of researchers including Felicia Goodrum of the University of Arizona's immunobiology department has studied how a human herpes virus carried by the majority of the population packages its genetic information during infection.
The discoveries improve the chances of developing more targeted therapies in place of existing drugs, which do not always work or come with side effects.
Experts estimate that 60 to 90 percent of the world's population carry the human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which is one of the eight herpes viruses that infect humans.
In ...
Tropical Storm Flossie weakened as it interacted with the Hawaiian Islands and became a depression. NASA's TRMM satellite saw mostly light rain and one isolated area of heavy rainfall within the storm after it weakened. All watches and warnings were dropped for the Hawaiian Islands on July 30.
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, satellite flew over Flossie on July 30 at 07:17 UTC (3:17 a.m. EDT) and saw a small area of heavy rain west of the center of circulation. TRMM data showed that the rest of Flossie's rainfall was light to moderate. TRMM is managed ...
Former Tropical Storm Dorian has been hanging around the Caribbean Sea for a couple of days, and appears stretched out on satellite imagery.
NOAA's GOES-13 satellite has been capturing images of the movement of Dorian since it was born. NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created an image of the storm using GOES-13 satellite data on July 30 at 1415 UTC/10:15 a.m. EDT. Dorian's remnants appear elongated from north to south on the GOES-13 image. The showers and thunderstorms are disorganized and extend a few hundred miles east ...
A new technique for depositing silver onto clothing fibres could open up huge opportunities in wearable electronics.
Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute, have developed a way to print silver directly onto fibres. This new technique could make integrating electronics into all types of clothing simple and practical. This has many potential applications in sports, health, medicine, consumer electronics and fashion.
Most current plans for wearable electronics require weaving conductive materials into fabrics, which ...
