A Mathematical Model for Oil Spill Clean up Using Ferromagnetic Nanoparticles

Permanent environmental damage cannot be compensated in terms of money. Unfortunately, oil spills contaminate water, restraining marine species of their habitat and food supply. Despite the numerous methods available today to clean up the water body by separation of oil and water, none have restored water to its previous quality or saved marine animals from its deleterious effects to the full extent. The biggest hurdle to this cause is the sunken oil; the oil which may have either sunken mixed with sand and mud or by dispersion due to weathering. Mechanical containment with recovery and use of dispersants will always be the most widely used response option for surface clean up due to its capability to directly remove oil from environment till today. Another spill response tool is In situ burning which is under study from several decades. Efforts are being made to enhance In situ burning such as Aerial Ignition System (AIS) and Chemical Herders. Although it is expected that this oil will float right up due to the density difference and cleaning will hence be easy, this is not always the case. The authors suggest the most effective workflow to clean up surface oil in marine oil spills as well as a way to tackle the sunken oil droplets. Choosing of an effective clean up method should always start with determining the amount of oil, density of oil, type of oil (crude or refined), salinity of water and the weather conditions. The authors thus propose an arrangement for real time tracking and mapping of an oil spill and then using most effective modern cleanup methods like booms, in situ burning, dispersants and skimmers followed by the use of polymer coated ferromagnetic nano particles to clean up sunken oil droplets. Magnetic nanoparticles are non-toxic nano sized sponges that sink deep inside the water body, absorb 10 times their weight of oil and float back up on the surface. Experiments with two samples of oil were conducted to check the effectiveness of ferrous nanoparticles in attracting oil out of water in various concentrations of nanoparticles to find the optimum level.

Ferrofluids are Fe3O4 based Magnetic Nano Particles (MNPs) and can be coated with a layer to form a super-hydrophobic material which selectively adsorbs oil. These colloidal ferromagnetic nano-particles show remarkable magnetic susceptibility. The ability of ferrorfluids was at display in the Gulf of Mexico and other oil spill clean-up. Excellent on-surface results suggest us to exploit its potential under sub-surface conditions too. The paper puts forward the potential on MNPs in EOR/IOR, proper production scenarios and techniques to inject this magnetically-controlled oil-adsorbing fluid through pad during hydraulic-fracturing operations. Sodium oleate coated magnetite (Fe3O4) is found to be the best suited MNP constituent for pad fluid. Fe3O4 particles modified with sodium oleate have successfully been able to generate super-hydrophobic surfaces. Their average size ranges from ~5nm to 10nm, thus are capable of getting suspended in pad fluid during injection and passing through the oil bearing zone without plugging the pores during fracturing operation. MNP's motion can be forced and controlled by applying magnetic field which makes MNPs a great asset for improvisation of fracturing techniquesn (Experimentally tested over 100 different oil and heavy crude oil at FERMILAB, Batavia Illinois). Injecting highly viscous Frackfluid ‘pad’ is amongst the primary part of fracturing job as it is used to initiate/propagate the fracture. Continuous loss of pad to formation will cause fracture propagation and at the final stage pad will be completely lost to the formation. Oleate coated MNP injected along with pad will selectively adsorb oil in the region where pad interacts with oil in formation. Initially applying outward magnetic field will cause solid MNPs to reach farther in formations, leaving behind the injected fluid in nearby formation, to sweep maximum reservoir volume. Second step is to apply an inward field towards the bore hole, which will force the MNPs to trace back into the wellbore along with adsorbed hydrocarbon on their surface. Magnetic field can easily drive these nanoparticles through tight/low permeable reserves and during heavy crude recovery. Their selective adsorption and hydrophobic nature can be of great significance in production through water bearing zones. Prepared MNP is both hydrophobic and lipophilic. Therefore Fe3O4 with sodium oleate could be soundly dispersed in the oil medium present in formations and recovered by applying magnetic field directed toward producing well. This technique shows a new path for the industry in advanced fracturing operations involving fracturing through deep, heavy oil reserves, HPHT and highly water saturated reserves. Validity of the proposed process has been elucidated in the paper considering various technical and operational variables.

Preparation, characterization and application of bilayer surfactant-stabilized ferrofluids

ВСТАНОВЛЕННЯ УМОВ СТАБІЛІЗАЦІЇ МАГНІТНИХ НАНОЧАСТИНОК У СКЛАДІ СИСТЕМ МАГНІТОКЕРОВАНОГО ТАРГЕТІНГУ ЛІКАРСЬКИХ РЕЧОВИН

Magnetic nanoparticles are amongst the most promising adsorption materials for oil spill clean-up due to their high surface area, ease of functionalization with high oil affinity and facile separation after the cleaning process with an external magnetic field. In this work, we successfully synthesized magnetic cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (CoFe2O4 NPs) that were electrostatically stabilized and functionalized with various alkoxysilanes for effective oil adsorption and oil spill removal. Additionally, the adsorption capacity of CoFe2O4 NPs was determined, and the possibility of their reuse assessed. Prepared samples showed high oil adsorption capacities between 2.6 and 3.5 g of oil per g of nanoparticles and were successfully collected with an external magnet. Furthermore, the samples showed excellent properties after regeneration, as their adsorption capacity decreased by less than 3% after reuse. All the prepared samples were thoroughly characterized to better understand their behaviour and the differences in the use of various silanes were highlighted.

The goal of this research work is to help and to contribute toward the minimization and the control of manmade water pollution on land and in marine environment. Since oil spill is a major environmental polluter and causes server damage to natural habitats, the oil separation from aqueous phase using polyolefin-bound magnetic nanoparticles with superhydrophobic or water repellent properties has become a promising area of research that is worth exploring. Perfectly designed, functionalized polyisobutylene (PIB) bound iron magnetic nanoparticle could be utilized for facile separation of complex pollutants (crude oil), diesel, gasoline and organic solvents (petroleum ether, benzene, chloroform) from aqueous polluted environment conditions. 80–90% of recovery of pollutants by external magnetic field was easily reached and resuse of polyisobutylene-catechol bound to magnetic nanoparticle was investigated in detail. Polyisobutylene-catechol grafting on iron magnetic nanoparticle obtained 42–52%. Stability of the terminally functionalized polyisobutylene-catechol bound to iron oxide was confirmed by UV-Visible spectroscopy studies. Moreover, these experiments suggest that this work might provide promising candidate for environmental remediation including oil spill. This research work is an eco-friendly process and high oil absorption materials and can have wide applications in heterogenous and homogenous catalysis.

Effective recovery of oil slick using the prepared high hydrophobic and oleophilic Fe3O4 magnetorheological fluid

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Using magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) for emulsified oil separation from wastewater is becoming increasingly widespread. This study aims to synthesize MNPs using amphiphilic coatings to stabilize the MNPs and prevent their agglomeration for efficiently breaking oil-in-water nanoemulsions. We coat two different sizes of Fe3O4 nanoparticles (15-20 and 50-100 nm) using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) with surfactant-to-MNP mass ratios of 0.4 and 0.8. We study the effect of various variables on the demulsification performance, including the MNP size and concentration, coating materials, and MNP loading. Based on the oil-water separation analysis, the smaller size MNPs (MNP-S) show a better demulsification performance than the larger ones (MNP-L ) for a 1000 ppm dodecane-in-water emulsion containing nanosized oil droplets (250-300 nm). For smaller MNPs (MNP-S) and at low dosage level of 0.5 g/L, functionalizing with surfactant-to-MNP mass ratio of 0.4, the functionalization increases the separation efficiency (SE) from 57.5% for bare MNP-S to 86.1% and 99.8 for the SDS and CTAB coatings, respectively. The highest SE for MNP-S@CTAB and the zeta potential measurements imply that electrostatic attraction between negatively charged oil droplets (-55.9 ± 2.44 mV) and positively charged MNP-S@CTAB (+35.8 ± 0.34 mV) is the major contributor to a high SE. Furthermore, the reusability tests for MNP-S@CTAB reveal that after 10 cycles, the amount of oil adsorption capacity decreases slightly, from 20 to 19 mg/g, indicating an excellent stability of synthesized nanoparticles. In conclusion, functionalized MNPs with tailored functional groups feature a high oil SE that could be effectively used for oil separation from emulsified oily wastewater streams.

Magnetic nanoparticles that display high saturation magnetization and high magnetic susceptibility are of great interest for medical applications. Magnetite nanoparticles display strong ferrimagnetic behavior and are less sensitive to oxidation than magnetic transition metal nanoparticles such as cobalt, iron, and nickel. For in vivo applications, well-defined organic coatings are needed to surround the magnetite nanoparticles and prevent any aggregation. The goal of this research was to develop complexes of magnetite nanoparticles coated with well-defined hydrophilic polymers so that they could be dispersed in aqueous fluids. Focal points have included the following: (1) Investigations of polymer systems that bind irreversibly to magnetite at the physiological pH, (2) the design of block copolymers with anchor and tail blocks to enable dispersion in biological fluids, and (3) investigations of copolymer block lengths to maximize the concentration of bound magnetite. Hydrophilic triblock copolymers with controlled concentrations of pendent carboxylic acid binding groups were designed as steric stabilizers for magnetite nanoparticles. These copolymers were comprised of controlled molecular weight poly(ethylene oxide) tail blocks and a central, polyurethane anchor block containing carboxylic acids. Stoichiometric aqueous solutions of FeCl2 and FeCl3 were condensed by reaction with NH4OH to form magnetite nanoparticles, and then a dichloromethane solution of the block copolymer was added to adsorb the copolymer onto the magnetite surfaces. Stable magnetite dispersions were prepared with all of the triblock copolymers. The polymer−nanomagnetite conjugates described in this paper had a maximum saturation magnetization of 34 emu/g. Magnetization curves showed minimal hysteresis. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), and high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) confirmed the magnetite crystal structure. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed that the dispersions contained magnetite particles coated with the polymers with a mean diameter of 8.8 ± S.D. 2.7 nm.

Water dispersion of magnetic nanoparticles with selective Biofunctionality for enhanced plasmonic biosensing

KEY FEATURES The key features of this chapter are Newton's laws of motion, the definitions of mass and force , the law of gravitation , the principle of equivalence , and gravitation by spheres . This chapter is concerned with the foundations of dynamics and gravitation . Kinematics is concerned purely with geometry of motion, but dynamics seeks to answer the question as to what motion will actually occur when specified forces act on a body. The rules that allow one to make this connection are Newton's laws of motion . These are laws of physics that are founded upon experimental evidence and stand or fall according to the accuracy of their predictions. In fact, Newton's formulation of mechanics has been astonishingly successful in its accuracy and breadth of application, and has survived, essentially intact, for more than three centuries. The same is true for Newton's universal law of gravitation which specifies the forces that all masses exert upon each other. Taken together, these laws represent virtually the entire foundation of classical mechanics and provide an accurate explanation for a vast range of motions from large molecules to entire galaxies. NEWTON'S LAWS OF MOTION Isaac Newton's three famous laws of motion were laid down in Principia , written in Latin and published in 1687. These laws set out the founding principles of mechanics and have survived, essentially unchanged, to the present day. Even when translated into English, Newton's original words are hard to understand, mainly because the terminology of the seventeenth century is now archaic.

The biomedical applications of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have gained increasing attention due to their unique biological, chemical, and magnetic properties such as biocompatibility, chemical stability, and high magnetic susceptibility. However, several critical issues still remain that have significantly halted the clinical translation of these nanomaterials such as the relatively low therapeutic efficacy, hyperthermia resistance, and biosafety concerns. To identify innovative approaches possibly creating synergies with MNPs to resolve or mitigate these problems, we delineated the anti-cancer properties of MNPs and their existing onco-therapeutic portfolios, based on which we proposed cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) to be a possible synergizer of MNPs by enhancing free radical generation, reducing hyperthermia resistance, preventing MNP aggregation, and functioning as an innovative magnetic and light source for magnetothermal- and photo-therapies. Our insights on the possible facilitating role of CAP in translating MNPs for biomedical use may inspire fresh research directions that, once actualized, gain mutual benefits from both.

Synthesis and functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles for glycoprotein and glycopeptide enrichment: A review

A novel experimental approach for direct observation of magnetic field induced structuration in ferrofluid