Many of the same tools and technologies have been deployed to deal with these environmental catastrophes over the past 20 years, but now, two teams of scientists say their reusable sponges can sop up oil at the surface and underwater — in some cases holding more than 30 times their weight — without doing additional harm to the marine environment.
It's the kind of innovation they say could make oil spill cleanups, like the situation currently playing out off Huntington Beach, not only more efficient but also more effective. An estimated 126,000 gallons of heavy crude leaked from a ruptured pipeline into the Pacific Ocean early Saturday, setting off frantic efforts to prevent the oil from washing up onto the area's beaches and into its protected marshlands.
Environmental response crews clean up oil that flowed near the Talbert Marsh and the mouth of the Santa Ana River, creating a sheen on the water, on Monday after an oil spill in the Pacific Ocean in Huntington Beach, Calif.
At Northwestern University, Vikas Nandwana and Vinayak Dravid developed a oil absorbent called the OHM sponge that uses a specially designed magnetic coating to selectively soak up oil in water.
In lab tests, Dravid and Nandwana showed that the OHM sponge could absorb more than 30 times its weight in oil and can be reused more than 40 times without losing its effectiveness.
With the OHM sponge, the recovered oil can be used again, which also means less overall waste after spills.
Both Nandwana and Dravid said OHM sponge was designed to fill a gap in available technologies to clean up oil spills, offering officials a new way to respond to major incidents like the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, when an estimated 210 million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. While satellite technologies to map and model oil spills have improved greatly since the Deepwater Horizon spill, the processes for cleanup crews on the water and on beaches have remained mostly stagnant.
"Deepwater Horizon should have driven a lot of innovation but didn't," said John Pardue, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University, who conducted research and ran an advisory program for a land trust in Louisiana in the aftermath of the 2010 spill.
He said it's because resources are typically devoted to studying the spill sites, as well as the effect of leaked oil on the environment and plants and animals in the region, while funding for developing new cleanup tools is usually limited.
"There's been upgrades in modeling how spills move and how oil affects fish and animals in the deep ocean and marshes, but in terms of response work, there were a few things that have been tried but nothing that rose to the level of something that will be used moving forward," Pardue said.
Scientists like Nandwana and Dravid are hoping to change that. At present, cleanup crews typically use booms to contain oil spills and prevent them from spreading. The oil can then be skimmed off the surface, but this method is less effective in choppy waters, and waves can push oil deeper into the ocean, where it's much harder to clean.
Another method for removing oil at the water’s surface is to burn it, but there are obvious drawbacks with employing that strategy. Local officials can also spray oil slicks with dispersants, which break oil into smaller droplets that mix more easily with water. The idea is to remove the oil through biodegradation, in which bacteria and other microorganisms naturally feed on the oil and essentially remove it from the environment.
With the OHM sponge, Nandwana said he expects the technology to be commercially available soon. Dravid added that his team has already sent samples to colleagues in California to help with recovery efforts at and around Huntington Beach.
In addition to cleanup efforts on the water, Dravid and Nandwana are exploring how the OHM sponge can be modified to soak up oil that washes up on beaches or to assist with cleaning up other types of hazardous contamination.
Dravid said he's eager for his research to have an impact, but it comes with a bittersweet cost.
"It's odd because on the one hand, we're excited for the opportunity to show how this technology can make a difference," he said. "But with oil spills, we're always sad for the environmental side of things."