Earth & Environment - Posted by Kathleen Hamilton-NYU on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 11:41 - 6 Comments 
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(2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5) Loading ...How nature cleans up a big oily mess
Research shows natural surfactants can work like soap to break oil into small globules that can then be digested by microbes that are already present in sea water. (Credit: NYU-Poly)
NYU (US)—What if cleaning up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t a matter of choosing between harsh chemical dispersants, labor-intensive skimming, and potentially dangerous burns? Nature may have already provided the ideal weapons: biosurfactants.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
These organic compounds are produced in nature for the exact purpose of oil dispersion and remediation. Formed by microbes such as yeast, bacteria, and fungi, biosurfactants are amphiphilic compounds—meaning they attract both lipids (such as oil) and water—and serve to reduce the surface tension between the two substances.
This facilitates the breakdown and dispersal of lipid molecules into smaller droplets.
Biosurfactants work in tandem with naturally occurring marine organisms—already present in sufficient quantity in the Gulf—which utilize the oil droplets as food, converting them into carbon dioxide, water, and biomass.
Richard Gross, professor of chemical and biological science at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, proposes introducing biosurfactants in sufficient quantity to assist these organisms in quickly converting the oil from the Deep Horizon spill.
Adapting nature’s approach to this disaster offers distinct advantages over current methods of remediation, according to Gross. “Unlike synthetic chemical dispersants, biosurfactants were designed by nature to provide marine microbes with a survival advantage in oil-rich environments,” he explains.
Physical cleaning methods, including skimmers, vacuums, and in situ burning, are limited by environmental factors, and chemical cleaning methods may have grave environmental repercussions for marine life.
Biosurfactants are well accepted by nature and pose no threat to marine ecosystems.
The first challenge will be to determine biosurfactant compositions that can function most efficiently to disperse the massive quantities of oil waste under a range of marine conditions that include variations in the Gulf temperature and oil compositions.
The second challenge is to encourage natural oil-degrading marine organism at the spill site to attach to the oil droplets formed by the biosurfactants and then use the oil as a food source.
The third is to determine that all these things occur quickly to protect the delicate balance present in marine ecosystems.
Gross estimates a 12-month project would cost $500,000 and that a first-generation product could be delivered within six months. He envisions assembling a team of scientists and engineers to optimize biosurfactants to speed their performance and determine which compounds provide an optimal environment for oil-degrading microorganisms.
The team would also develop a rapid fermentation process to produce the compounds at adequate scale for current needs and eventual stockpiling for future spills.
“Cleaning up a major oil spill frequently takes years, so there will be many opportunities to employ this technology in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere,” Gross says.
More news from NYU-Poly: www.poly.edu
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6 Comments
If it works, be sure there are enough spills in Nigeria to use this on.
philosopherkingtomas
check out a delivery system:
Ecosphere Energy Services, a subsidiary of Ecosphere Technologies of Florida. The new company, based in Whitefish and run by part-time resident Dennis McGuire, set out to build a system that could clean the toxic metals-laced wastewater that is produced in the process of drilling new oil wells.
Today, the company’s Ozonix system is used at drilling sites around the country.
The system, which takes up an entire 53-foot truck trailer, employs a combination of ozone, ultrasound and high-voltage electricity to separate oil, gas and other contaminants from water through a process known as sonoluminescence.
“The water that comes out at the end of the process is cleaner than bottled drinking water,” said Wold. “And the oil is pure enough that they can truck it up and sell it.”
The Ozonix system has already been deployed to help out in past ecological disasters. In the days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in 2005, Ecosphere sent one of its Ozonix systems to Waveland, Miss. Operators stuck an intake hose into the city’s sewer system, and produced 70,000 gallons of fresh drinking water every day for area residents.
Wold said the company already has enough of the machines to completely handle the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.
“If this machine was out there right now, there would not be any continuous leakage” said Wold, noting that one Ozonix system can process more than a million gallons of contaminated water a day.
Experts believe that the ruptured well at the floor of the Gulf of Mexico may be spewing as much as 2.1 million gallons of crude oil per day.
“With the machines we already have deployed around the country, we absolutely have enough capacity to take care of it all,” said Wold.
DMS
What ever happened to the bioengineered microorganisms that could digest oil spills? The first patent on one was filed in the late 1970s and resulted in the landmark case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty where the Supreme court decided that engineered living things could be patent-worthy subject mater. By now there ought to be several in the public domain (due to patent term expiration).
Leah
This is good, but let’s not forget that all those microorganisms that eventually eat the broken-down oil create an oxygen-suck in the ocean food chain, using up huge quantities of oxygen that would otherwise be supporting other life forms. Not that those life forms could exist in a sea full of oil, but let’s just not all pretend that nice-sounding alternatives like this don’t also have consequences. Also, the spill already depletes oxygen in the water, creating low-oxygen or “dead zone” conditions in which oil-eating bacteria and microbes (not to mention everything else) can’t survive, so this may not be as perfect as it seems.
Ed
I’m sorry to say that this is probably one of the worst photosop jobs I’ve ever seen….
It looks like Gross has finally come up with the right answer. If this works, the necessary materials can be prepared in quantity before there is another spill. It will also open up a lot of areas that are off-limits because of environmental dangers.