Ferrofluid and cleaning up oil spills.

[deleted-361621]

HELP! My partners and I are making our own ferrofluid and then trying to clean up oil in water as one of your labs suggested. Unfortunately, the ferrofluid won't pick up the mineral oil. Also, we haven't figured out a way to properly store ferrofluid. We tried Isopropyl Alcohol but that appeared to take away the surfactant. Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated!

[williamcolocho]

Where did you get your ferrofluid? The instructions state:
Ferrofluid, 25 mL (Note: if you buy ferrofluid from a different source, make sure it uses mineral oil as its carrier fluid.)

[deleted-361621]

We made our ferrofluid with Iron II chloride solution, Iron III chloride solution, Ammonia water and Tetramethylamonium hydroxide solution. It's for our science project and we want to figure our what went wrong.

[deleted-2131]

Hi 17marlaw,

In order for the project to work, your ferrofluid *must* use mineral oil as the carrier fluid. (See the "Materials" list in the Project Idea.) The ferrofluid that you made uses water as the carrier fluid. As a consequence, your ferrofluid will not work for this project. In order to do this project, you will either need to purchase the kit from Science Buddies or another source that uses mineral oil as the carrier fluid.