Innovation Pipeline

The old saying is that oil and water don’t mix. But in fact separating oil from water is no easy task.
Research engineers at the University of Utah http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=111209-1 have come up with an inexpensive way to remove oil from on water. It’s accomplished by applying pressurizing and depressurizing cycles of ozone gas in a containment vesicle to the oily water. The microscopic bubbles, which have strong oxidant properties, attack the oil and break it down so it can be removed by sand filters. The scrubbing bubbles have a great deal of surface area and permit the oil to interact with the gas and the pollutants accumulate on the bubbles.

Researchers say they’re not trying to treat the all the oil in the water but convert it to a form that can be captured by a simple and economical process like sand filtration.

The research findings were reported in the journal Chemosphere. Currently the patent-pending methods developed by Andy Hong, professor of civil and environmental engineering, have several different industrial applications.

Among them: oil and gas drilling sites, where injected oily water can potentially be cleaned and used for other purposes, such as irrigation. The method could also be applied to water contaminated by the gasoline additive MTBE, which ends up in groundwater. And there are other emerging contaminants the method could be used on.

In laboratory tests, Hong found that his method removed 99 percent of the turbidity from water and 83 percent of the oil. The remainder was converted to dissolved organic acids, which can be removed by biodegradation. The research group plans to perform a larger-scale pilot test in Wuxi, China. The prototype device is capable of treating 200 liters of polluted water each cycle.

The University of Utah Research Foundation has entered into options to license the technology to Miracotech of Albany, Calif., and 7Rev, a Salt Lake City venture capital group, to help bring the technology to market. By Lee Bruno