New alternative for cleaning oil spills at sea.

They develop a system to extract oil spills in the ocean using a magnetic method.

Oil spills at sea could have a new solution: a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a method to separate water from oil using magnets.

This technique, which allows the oil to be reused after being reused, would help offset clean-up costs.

The proposed method consists of adding nanoparticles with iron to the mixture and then separating the oil using a magnet. According to the researchers, it is a very simple operation, but it must, however, be carried out on a ship so that the nanoparticles do not contaminate the ocean.

Although other methods have already been proposed, they had the disadvantage that it was necessary to know in advance the concentration of water and oil in the mixture. This new proposed technique places the magnets inside the stream, and not outside of it, so it is not important to know the concentration of each component in the mixture.

"The problem of oil spills has not been sufficiently addressed," says Ronald Rosensweig, a former researcher at Exxon and a pioneer in the study of ferrofluids.

"One could think of separating oil from water by centrifugation, but often the density of both fluids is the same and this is not possible. The magnetic hook would allow a faster and more effective separation," he said.