| Posted: August 5, 2010 |
Power plant waste to be used to clean up Gulf oil spill |
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(Nanowerk News) Specially treated waste material from electric power plants will soon be used to clean up oil in the Gulf thanks to the ingenuity of a University of Central Florida professor.
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The National Science Foundation awarded Sudipta Seal a $67,000 grant that will help the professor turn waste material, commonly referred to as flyash, into a cleaning agent. Seal will modify the flyash so that it absorbs oil and can be delivered to a coal-burning facility and re-used.
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| Professor Sudipta Seal works in his lab at the University of Central Florida.
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The flyash will be safe, preserve the oil's energy-generating capabilities and be reusable once the oil is burned off.
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"It's a completely green process very cost effective and easy to scale up," said Seal, who has been studying the characteristics of flyash for more than a decade as part of his research on rare earth nanoparticles.
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Seal is director of UCF's Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis and NanoScience Technology Centers and a professor of mechanical, materials and aerospace engineering.
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Larry Hench, a renowned ceramic materials professor who conducts special projects for UCF, will work with Seal to develop the flyash and prepare a process for deployment that can then be licensed to a commercial partner.
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They envision that the flyash will be retrieved from the water in a low-cost mesh packaging material and then transported to a coal-burning power plant or other facility where the oil will fuel production processes.
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The flyash has also shown the ability to clump oil that has already washed up on shore, enabling it to be easily collected and, again, re-used.
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Since the Deepwater Horizon spill began in April, NSF has funded 65 of the rapid response grants to researchers across the country addressing all aspects of the clean-up.
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The grants are deployed in times of natural or accidental disasters to quickly engage the world's best scientists and engineers to help search for solutions.
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