Absorbing Your Problems; Removing Oil Pollutents in Water

by: Leonel Baldazo




In the world of today humanity is high reliant on oils like petroleum. There are oil rigs in the oceans right now extracting oil from deep within the ocean floors. Some of these rigs have had massive spills over their history making drastic changes to the ocean environment to the point where it affects humans as well. As for in land BTEX ( Benzene-Toluene-etheylbenzen and xylenes)is the most common groundwater contaminant (Karadag et. al., 2016).  BTEX is created when petroleum products are refined. These Chemicals are extremely harmful to plants and humans. Benzene is a carcinogen and the rest altering the Central Nervous System. There are multiple ways to remove oils and organic contaminants from water, but in previous articles it has shown that absorbing agents are the best at removing these contaminates ( Karadag et. al., 2016). To resolve this issue this article tests multiple absorbing agents with a focus on poly(alkoxysilane). Poly(alkoxysilane) once tested was discovered to be the most favorable of agents because of its fast absorption rate, good reusability and stability, and has a great selectivity for oil and organic s11ubstances

Here we see a poly(alkoxysilane) added to water containing toluene. After 1 minute there is clearly less toluene because of the absorbing agent.

References

Karadag K., Yati I., Bulbul Sonmez H. Effective clean-up of organic liquid contaminants including BTEX, fuels, and organic solvents from the environment by poly(alkoxysilane) sorbents (2016)  Journal of Environmental Management,  174 , pp. 45-54.