MRI-RAPID: Acquisition of a Microscopic Contact Angle Meter for Rapid and Accurate Characterization of Spill Oil Retention Enhancement on Nanostructured Materials

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This Major Research Instrumentation Grant for Rapid Response Research (MRI-RAPID)award will be used to acquire an automatic microscopic contact angle meter (Kyowa MCA-3) for use in evaluating the wetting behaviors of small oil droplets of the kind typically found in the oil/water dispersions created in the Gulf oil spill. The quantitative characterization of these wetting behaviors is critical to both the evaluation of the effectiveness of natural wicking materials and the design of synthetic materials for both oil absorption and oil/water separation. The equipment is highly specialized to create oil droplets down to 20 microns in diameter and measure their contact angles when wetting low surface area, nonplanar materials, such as individual hairs or fibers. The speed of measurement is sufficient to obtain accurate contact angles even for droplets with high vapor pressures (evaporation rates), such as oil. The availability of such a capability will enable the rapid screening of potential oil wicking and separation materials that are being considered for use in the Gulf oil spill and will also serve the long term pursuit of a fundamental theory of surface wetting and two-phase fluid separation.Numerous materials, from animal hair to cotton, corn husks, feathers and hay have been proposed for mopping up Gulf oil. The time and cost of evaluating these options experimentally would be enormous, making a quick, laboratory scale evaluation based on fundamental surface interactions a potentially critical resource. The equipment may well enable such an evaluation.