###Magnetic particle-based Pickering emulsions for marine pollutant remediation
Project ID: 2228bd1212 (You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Advanced Materials
UCL Lead department: Chemistry
Lead Supervisor: Gemma-Louise Davies
Project Summary:
The World’s largest oil spill in history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, began in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010; 134 million gallons of oil were released and 1,300 miles of the US Gulf Coast were coated with oil. The clean-up of this spill used over 1.4 million gallons of oil-dispersing chemicals, with some of these known to increase oil’s toxicity to marine life. Although there exist approaches for the clean-up of oil spills, such as skimmers and burning in situ, many are costly, inefficient, ineffective and slow to achieve results. Therefore, development of alternative routes to addressing large-scale marine oil spills is of vital importance.
Pickering emulsions, which are stabilised by inorganic nanoparticles, could provide an alternative oil removal system, with micro-assemblies encapsulating the polluting oil, however, their success to date has been limited as their removal can be challenging. Developing Pickering emulsions which are capable of oil removal, as well as easy collection and subsequent ability to break these stable emulsions for the recycling of the stabilising particles and safe disposal of the collected oil, is of the utmost importance. Magnetic nanoparticles have been explored as Pickering emulsion stabilisers, with their response to magnetic fields proving useful for magnetic targeting and separation as well as (very recently) a mechanism for demulsification and hence release of an emulsion cargo, however they have not yet been explored for magnetic recovery and disposal of pollutant oils.
This project aims to develop Pickering emulsion micro-assemblies to encapsulate marine oil spills using magnetic nanomaterials, allowing easy magnetic removal, as well as providing a magnetic trigger for demulsification to release the oil and allow re-use of the magnetic particles, as a practical and efficient tool for environmental remediation.