Pittsburgh Professor Creates Filter That Separates Oil From Water

First posted on 06-10-2010

A University of Pittsburgh engineering professor has come up with a way to separate oil from water and he thinks it might be just the ticket to cleaning up BP’s mess in the Gulf of Mexico.

Di Gao, an assistant professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, coated an ordinary cotton filter with a chemical polymer. The polymer blocks oil but allows water to pass right through.

Gao developed the product as a way to help contain and clean up the massive oil plume that resulted from the April 20 explosion of BP’s “Deepwater Horizon” drilling platform. He submitted his concept to the Deepwater Horizon Response Web, a site set up in response to the disaster. Gao said he envisions trough-shaped filters dragged through Gulf waters to capture oil near the surface. The oil can actually be recovered and the filter reused.

The polymer Gao uses to coat filters bonds to hydrogen molecules in water while repelling oil. Submerging a filter in a bath containing the polymer, then drying it creates the oil separating device.

Gao tested the filter in waters off the coast of Louisiana, in the middle of the oil plume, and was able to successfully remove oil from Gulf water and recover the oil. Gao is shown demonstrating his filter in the video at the end of this article.

If further tests show similar success, Gao’s filter may well be the tool of choice for cleaning up the BP mess and may even have broader applications to smaller oil spills throughout the world, including any in our own Ozarks.