Sponge absorbs 180 times its weight (in toxic sludge)

(Credit: Peking University and Tsinghua University)

That tiny, plastic-looking black cube up there can absorb up to 180 times its own weight in toxic waste without absorbing any water. How? As with just about every amazing and/or inexplicable scientific breakthrough nowadays, the answer is spelled N-A-N-O.

Researchers at Peking and Tsinghua universities, both in Beijing, have adapted carbon nanotubes into a sponge-like material that can be squeezed dry, which sounds like extremely exciting news for the infomercial cleaning product industry. One minor detail:

Since carbon nanotubes are hydrophobic, there's no modification required to make them not absorb water.

For the record, that includes mysteriously blue infomercial demo water, so there goes that. If not absorbing 20 times as much water as its leading competitor, what exactly is this new type of sponge good for? Environmental cleanup, evidently. See, instead of just dropping dispersants into the middle of an oil or chemical spill--which forces the spill to simply absorb into the water--these light and porous nanosponges could float in water and be used to sop up the spill, after which they could theoretically be wrung dry and reused, like so:

The scientists detail their findings in Advanced Materials. It's an amazing idea, but I get the feeling that carbon nanotube sponges, riskily abbreviated as CNT sponges, won't exactly be cheap.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

[nopinktoday]

Now that's pretty nifty!

[dpsavy]

The ability to efficiently clean up our mess: that would be an ideal discovery if ever there was one.

[derbco]

thats pretty cool.... but, carbon nanotubes take quite a bit to produce... and at the rate we "need to be cleaned up after ( my quote )" it would just be much easier to not have to use this in that fashion"( cleaning up our messes...) ..... this is a very cool and enovative technology.... and i'm sure that it will be usefull for many things. as for the oil spills, ( or chemical spills) the world needs to change towards the greater well being instead of the wealth and power of the few, there would not be so much 'oil' to spill or to fight over..........

[dracoaffectus]

Of course, this begs the obvious question...What happens to the toxic waste after we sop it up with a CNT sponge?

[nate736259]

Put it somewhere where it won't kill off an ecosystem?

[SteveChicago]

C'mon guys, toxic waste is semantics. Crude oil in the ocean is waste that was a product. So are most chemical spills. This CNT sponge looks to have the unique ability to collect the spilled product and not collect the "stuff" it spilled into. After an oil spill, dump a bunch of these in the water to collect the oil and when the empty tanker shows up, pick all these out of the water and squeeze (reclaim) the "product" into the empty tanker.

[derbco]

dracoaffectus is absolutely right..... what do we do with it then?
good point.........

[derbco]

there's really not any place that wont kill off our ecosystem in the long run....yeah, we could put it all in drums, bury them..... but in so many years, they all come back to haunt us, or our grandchildren...... its gunna happen.....

[AdrianMiller]

Hi guys, thanks for the interest in this work! We think it's exciting too; to answer some previous questions, remember that the sponges don't just suck up oil, they also repel water, so in theory you could just drop them into a spill, let them do their thing, and then squeeze the recovered oil back out into barrels. No need to dispose of them afterwards. Pretty nifty (at least we think so!)

Adrian Miller, Advanced Materials

[wigmo]

What about an oily forehead?

[Remo_Williams]

Doesn't matter if they're expensive, they'll be funded out of the fine money you levy against the offender, i.e. you are ordered to pay for cleanup, and by the way, you're buying enough of these to clean this up.

[paul_1149]

This is a huge breakthrough. The sponges can be mechanically expanded and squeezed to collect spills. Theoretically the spilled material could be salvaged for reuse.

[armorgator]

send it into..... spaaaaaccceee. maybe? oh that might kill the aliens :P

well, i guess there might be SOMETHING wrong with that... hm.

[thebigbosh]

how long before we see this in action??

[AdrianMiller]

If anyone's interested in finding out more about this work (notwithstanding my highly informative previous post :) ) we've set the original article to be freely accessible for the next month, you can find it at: http://www.materialsviews.com/matview/display/en/1220/TEXT

Adrian Miller
Advanced Materials