Ultra-Light Nanotube Aerogels to Help Clean Up Oil Spills
Oil Spills / 2014 11
J. Casalnuovo
In the last 20 years, scientists have been focusing on creating aerogels out of silica or polymer, but the UPenn researchers decided to use commercial nanotubes and big graphene sheets. Because of the material used to create them, these aerogels consist of 99.9% empty space. When used to clean up oil spills, the oil gets separated when one simply squeezes or burns the fire-resistant and reusable nanotube aerogels (5).