STTR Phase I:An Oleophilic Hydrophobic Magnetic (OHM) Sponge for Environmental Remediation

The broader impact of this STTR Phase I project is to develop an environmental remediation platform for oil spills and related contaminants in water bodies.Oil spills and associated heavy metals/toxins have significant economic, social, and environmental adverse impacts. The current state-of-the-art approaches are expensive, pose dangers to marine life, and/or generate physical waste. This project introduces a widely deployable sponge technology that attracts oil and resists water.It can selectively remove and recover oil from an oil/water mixture and is re-usable. The materials/methods in the proposed project are cost-effective, scalable, and ecologically friendly.The intellectual merit of the proposed project is to advance a technology leveraging the interfacial tension at an oil-water interface.This project develops a nanotechnology-based simple and scalable sponge that can selectively sequester oil molecules and metal toxins from an oil-water interface. The proposed system coats commercially available sponges with a nanocomposite material.Activities include optimization of key factors affecting interactions between oil and metal toxins with nanocomposites coated on sponge pores and tailoring both the length-scale and chemical architecture for remediation applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.