Natural Sorbents: Enough to Clean Up an Oil Spill? Monica Chauhan and Natasha Bortolazzo Alpha Secondary Floor Location: J69V

Our problem for our experiment was "Will natural harmless sorbents be able to clean up an oil spill?" We chose to pursue this problem because we wanted to be able to contribute ideas to help clean up oil spills such as the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, and in a way that would not affect the wildlife.

In our hypothesis we claimed that If we test all the natural sorbents then we will find that the cotton absorbs the most motor oil.

We used four different sorbents: Alfa-Alfa Hay, Noble Fir, 100% Organic Cotton and Sawdust. We did 5 trials for each sorbent. For our procedure we:
1. Measured all the sorbents to 10g each
2. Filled a 250mL beaker with 50mL of Motor Oil and 200mL of salt water
3. Slowly we dipped in the sorbent and let it sit in the oil/water mixture for 60secs.
4. Then we put the sorbents in a sieve and let it drain out the extra water/oil for 15secs.
5. The remaining oil and water levels subtract the starting oil and water levels equalled the amount of oil and water absorbed.
6. We repeated these steps 19 more times for the rest of the trials.

We observed that the cotton balls absorbed a large quantity of water. With that we researched information on cotton and found that it can absorb up to 27 times its weight in water. That is why the most effective bath towels are made of cotton. We found that the noble fir absorbed the least; this is because it takes longer than 60 seconds for the water and oil to be absorbed through the branches.

Our results can be applied in the world to oil spills such as the Chevron Refineries mini oil spill in Burnaby, BC, Canada. It was so diminutive that it could be cleaned up with saw dust. To pick up the saw dust in the ocean you can use a net that acts like a sieve. This is a possible and harmless way to clean up an oil spill.

In conclusion we found that the best natural sorbent was indeed Sawdust. In oil absorption sawdust and cotton tied both absorbing an average 25mL of 50mL of motor oil. We thought that Sawdust was better because the cotton absorbed a large quantity of water which would defeat the purpose of our project. If they did use cotton to absorb an oil spill the water levels of the lake/ocean would tremendously drop, which would be the exact opposite of what we want.