RAPID: Oil Optimized Particle Surfaces (OOPS)

非技术描述：该项目解决了国家安全清除漏油的迫切需要，例如最近和正在发生的墨西哥湾深水灾难。教授Seal和Hench正在使用粉煤灰，一种发电厂燃烧煤炭产生的废料，通过简单的化学改变粉煤灰表面，以具有成本效益的方式从油水混合物中吸收大量的油。然后，这些材料可以被放置在低成本的可渗透油的网状包装材料中，以用于油清洁的实际用途。在清理之后，材料可以通过将它们进料到燃烧过程中以回收油的热值而不分解飞灰来容易地回收。这将是一个完全的绿色过程。研究生和本科生都将接受这一项目的培训，并将向学校提供一个样本包，用于科学展览项目，以鼓励清洁环境的创新应用。技术规格：目前难以找到一个负担得起的和易于部署的解决方案，以海湾石油泄漏灾难强调迫切需要新的技术，在石油回收。该项目提供了使用低温化学处理来在分子水平上定制具有高表面积的复杂无定形铝硅酸盐的无机表面的机会。这提供了必要的疏水基团以吸附包括长链烃的有机分子。 该方法产生的最终产品是吸收大量油的低成本手段，并且还能够回收油的能量值。该项目可能导致将无机惰性表面转化为高活性疏水表面的一般理论，而不会降低这些无机复合硅酸盐的耐火特性。该项目能够迅速部署，以满足当前危机的需要。RAPID项目可能会向石油和能源部门的商业伙伴演示原型工艺，以制造和快速部署一种具有成本效益的方法，从海岸线、沼泽地和水中回收石油，同时保留石油的热值，而不是以破坏环境的方式处置废物。 化学优化的飞灰颗粒还可以通过从表面解吸油而不受颗粒分解的污染而潜在地用于油回收过程中。

NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: This project addresses the urgent national need of safe scavenging of oil from spills such as the recent and on-going deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Profs. Seal and Hench are using flyash, a waste material resulting from combustion of coal in electrical power plants, to absorb large volumes of oil from an oil-water mixture by a simple chemical alteration of the flyash surface in a cost effective manner. These materials then can be placed in a low-cost oil-permeable mesh packaging material for practical use in oil clean-up. After the clean-up, the materials can be easily recycled by feeding them into a combustion process to recover the thermal value of the oil without decomposition of the flyash. This will be a completely a green process. Both graduate and undergraduate students will be trained in this project, and a sample kit will be made available to schools for science fair projects to stimulate innovative applications to clean the environment. TECHNICAL DETAILS: The current difficulty of finding an affordable and easily deployable solution to the Gulf oil spill disaster emphasizes urgency for new technologies in oil recovery. This project offers the opportunity to use low temperature chemical processing to tailor inorganic surfaces of complex amorphous aluminosilicates with high surface area at a molecular level. This provides the necessary hydrophobic groups to adsorb organic molecules including long chain hydrocarbons. The process leads to an end product that is a low cost means of absorbing large volumes of oil and also be capable of recovering the energy value of the oil. This project potentially can lead to a general theory converting inorganic inert surfaces to a highly active hydrophobic surface without degrading the refractory characteristics of these inorganic complex silicates. The project is capable of rapid deployment to meet the needs of the current crisis. The RAPID project may result in a prototype process demonstration to commercial partners in the oil and energy sectors for manufacture and rapid deployment of a cost effective means of recovering the oil from shorelines, marsh lands, and water, while retaining the thermal value of the oil rather than disposing of the waste matter in an environmentally damaging manner. The chemically optimized fly ash particles also can potentially be used in an oil recovery process by desorbing the oil from the surface without contamination by the decomposition of the particles.