Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, I am currently starting a project dealing with oil spills and sorbent booms. I am using different mateirals to deturmine which natural material is most effective for sorbent booms. I need to eventually filter oil to deturmine which material absorbed the most oil, although I am unsure how to do that in an accurate way. Do you have any suggestions?

Hello,

this is great project idea!

You will find a good answer to your problem in this Science buddy project which is comparable to yours:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p025.shtml

Basically, the idea is to place a known amount of water and oil in a measuring cup, than to ad the sorbent, leave it time to absorb the oil, remove the sorbent, and read on the measuring cup the remaining volumes of oil and water.

Also, here is a thread in the forum dealing with oil spill sorbents that you might be interested in:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ill#p27419

Don't hesitate to let me know if you have further questions!

Thanks so much for the tips! They will be very helpful. I am actually going to make makeshift booms (the material enclosed inside stocking material) to test my materials in. I am thinking of placing them in a small swimming pool filled with water and oil. The booms will be in a string. I have done this project before, but I used a homemade filter made mostly of a coffee filter.I also didn't have as much water and as many booms. My previous methods had a ton of human error and I am trying to improve this aspect of my experiment. Is there a way to mathematically calculate the oil absorbed, or should I look for a more advanced oil filter to use?

One way to at least assess, if not reduce, human error, would to repeat each experiment several times. This way, you would see how much your results are reproducible.
For a "mathematical" way to measure the oil absorbed, I would suggest that you lift the filter, let it drain for a set period of time (30s for example as they do in the science buddies project), and then press it as hard as you can over a measuring cup (or a cup on a scale). This way, you would have either the volume or the weight or oil absorbed. The strength used to press to filter could be considered constant as it would be your maximum strength.
Make sure you refill your small swimming pool with the same amount of water and oil each time, you want the booms to be the only variable in your experiment.

I hope this helps. If not, or if you have more questions, I'll be glad to to try to answer those.

Heloise

That is very helpful! Thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time to help me out.Thanks again!

If I have any more questions. I will be sure to ask.