Magnetic Soap Could Clean-Up Oil Spills

A first-of-its kind soap design has potential environmental applications including aiding oil spill clean-up efforts, its developers have reported.

Pioneered by UK-based scientists, the magnetically-responsive soap is a world-first. It's made up of an iron-rich salt solution that, when placed in water, exhibits a magnetic field response. That allows both the soap and the materials dissolved by it to be separated from water.

Key to this soap's abilities is that, in the event of an oil spill, the soap's removal could take place after the event. That should allay environments' concerns over surfactants being deployed during clean-ups.

Oil Spill Clean-Up Soap

The oil spill clean-up soap's been pioneered by a team at the University of Bristol, which has previously unveiled other hi-tech soap variations including light- and temperature-sensitive products.

With Bristol university's Professor Julian Eastoe at their helm, the team came up with this soap by using a variety of surfactants as a base to dissolve iron. The resulting soap particles, with metallic cores, were trialled and showed that they could bypass the effects of gravity and ascend to a magnet's grip. Control over the reaction would be achieved through activating or deactivating the magnetic field.

Magnetic Soap

"As most magnets are metals, from a purely scientific point of view these ionic liquid surfactants are highly unusual, making them a particularly interesting discovery", Professor Eastoe said, in a statement on the magnetic soap released by the University of Bristol.

"While these exact liquids aren't yet ready to appear in any household product, proving that magnetic soaps can be developed means that future work can reproduce the same phenomenon in more commercially viable liquids for a range of applications from water treatment to industrial cleaning products", he added.

"Any systems which act only when responding to an outside stimulus that has no effect on its composition is a major breakthrough as you can create products which only work when they are needed to", industrial chemist Peter Dowding explained in the same document. "Also, the ability to remove the surfactant after it has been added widens the potential applications to environmentally sensitive areas like oil spill clean ups where in the past concerns have been raised."

Image copyright US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

See also:

Companies supplying Spill Control and Clean-Up Services