Cleaning Up Oil Spills With 3D-Printed Skimmers

Researchers have designed oil-skimmers that can be 3D-printed in the field as a practical way to filter and store oil from spills.

AsianScientist (May 3, 2016) – Researchers in China have developed a 3D-printed oil-skimmer for oil collection from spills with outstanding oil collection capacity and collected oil keeping stability. Details of the device were published in Advanced Materials Interfaces.

Frequent oil spill accidents on seas and discharge of industrial oil-containing waste water both greatly pollute the environment. Consequently, oil removal and collection has become an urgent task and various techniques have been developed to address the issue. However, the current techniques all have downsides, such as high cost, low oil absorption capacity, and weak oil keeping stability.

The oil-skimmer, developed by Professor Zhou Feng at the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues, contains two main parts: namely, the top 3D printed mesh treated with low surface energy materials, and the bottom container. The good water repellency of the 3D printed mesh efficiently filters floating oil, while the bottom container stores it.

Importantly, the collected oil won’t leak from the vessel even when the device is tossed around, indicating the skimmer’s potential for use under sea waves or even in stormy conditions. Moreover, taking advantage of computer-aided design and freeform fabrication in 3D printing, each of the oil-skimmer’s parts can be designed and fabricated on-site or in the field.

This solution, therefore, could represent a highly promising, practical method of cleaning up oil spills wherever they occur.


The article can be found at: Yan et al. (2016) 3D Printing as Feasible Platform for On-Site Building Oil-Skimmer for Oil Collection from Spills.

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Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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