<div align="justify">Scientists have developed a simple, cheap and environment-friendly system that can effectively remove spilt crude oil from sea that can pollute and even destroy marine ecosystems.<br /><div align="justify"><br />Marine oil spills are disasters that cannot be completely avoided as long as we drill for oil or transport it across the ocean, researchers said.</div><div align="justify"><br />An effective measure would be to remove spilt oil slicks by absorption into a separable solid phase.</div><div align="justify"><br />Now, scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala have found that congelation of the oil to a rigid gel within impregnated cellulose and scooping the particles out is possible.<br /><br />Kana M Suresan and Annamalai Prathap from IISER have developed and tested an intriguingly simple strategy.<br /><br />Combining absorption and gelation processes, they tightly bound the oil to a porous matrix and then simply scooped the solid particles out of the water.</div><div align="justify"><br />Even full with the oil, the granules did not sink but remained at the surface.</div><div align="justify"><br />The scientists also demonstrated that squeezing of the congealed granules can help recover the spilt oil.<br /><br />The scientists chose cellulose as an environment friendly, cheap and porous carrier matrix and impregnated it with a so-called oleogelator, a cheap organic compound.</div><div align="justify"><br />This simple impregnation step proved to be key in converting the cellulose to an effective oil-absorbing and recycling system.</div><div align="justify"><br />"Phase-selective organogelators are amphiphiles which can congeal oils selectively from a biphasic mixture of oil and water," the scientists wrote in the journal Angewandte Chemie.</div><div align="justify"><br />Gelation occurs because the gelator molecules get dissolved in the oily phase, and then they form a three- dimensional fibre network through hydrogen bonding.</div><div align="justify"><br />The oil becomes trapped in this fibrillar network to form a rigid gel. Thus, gelation turns the liquid oil phase into a solid one, which can be simply scooped out.</div><div align="justify"><br />The other advantage of impregnation is that the gelator renders the cellulose matrix hydrophobic. It did not suck in water as naked cellulose does.<br /><br />However, it "absorbed all the oil, and the rigid globules containing the congealed oil could be scooped out after two hours, leaving the clean water," the researchers said.</div></div>
<div align="justify">Scientists have developed a simple, cheap and environment-friendly system that can effectively remove spilt crude oil from sea that can pollute and even destroy marine ecosystems.<br /><div align="justify"><br />Marine oil spills are disasters that cannot be completely avoided as long as we drill for oil or transport it across the ocean, researchers said.</div><div align="justify"><br />An effective measure would be to remove spilt oil slicks by absorption into a separable solid phase.</div><div align="justify"><br />Now, scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala have found that congelation of the oil to a rigid gel within impregnated cellulose and scooping the particles out is possible.<br /><br />Kana M Suresan and Annamalai Prathap from IISER have developed and tested an intriguingly simple strategy.<br /><br />Combining absorption and gelation processes, they tightly bound the oil to a porous matrix and then simply scooped the solid particles out of the water.</div><div align="justify"><br />Even full with the oil, the granules did not sink but remained at the surface.</div><div align="justify"><br />The scientists also demonstrated that squeezing of the congealed granules can help recover the spilt oil.<br /><br />The scientists chose cellulose as an environment friendly, cheap and porous carrier matrix and impregnated it with a so-called oleogelator, a cheap organic compound.</div><div align="justify"><br />This simple impregnation step proved to be key in converting the cellulose to an effective oil-absorbing and recycling system.</div><div align="justify"><br />"Phase-selective organogelators are amphiphiles which can congeal oils selectively from a biphasic mixture of oil and water," the scientists wrote in the journal Angewandte Chemie.</div><div align="justify"><br />Gelation occurs because the gelator molecules get dissolved in the oily phase, and then they form a three- dimensional fibre network through hydrogen bonding.</div><div align="justify"><br />The oil becomes trapped in this fibrillar network to form a rigid gel. Thus, gelation turns the liquid oil phase into a solid one, which can be simply scooped out.</div><div align="justify"><br />The other advantage of impregnation is that the gelator renders the cellulose matrix hydrophobic. It did not suck in water as naked cellulose does.<br /><br />However, it "absorbed all the oil, and the rigid globules containing the congealed oil could be scooped out after two hours, leaving the clean water," the researchers said.</div></div>