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Could we use magnets to clean up oil spills? Tiny magnetic particles could separate pollutant from beaches and birds


The world watched in horror as images of once pristine beaches became coated in oil and thousands of species of birds struggled to survive in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

But upsetting images of the ‘worst environmental disaster the U.S. has faced’ provided one physicist with the inspiration to devise a faster and more thorough way of mopping up spilled oil.

It took Arden Warner just hours to come up with a method of magnetising oil so that the environmentally damaging fluid could be collected using a magnet.
 
Dr Warner, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, saw the benefits of placing magnetic material in an oily solution instead of adding extra man-made chemicals to water.

‘Apply a magnetic field, and the particles will line up in the direction of the field. Orthogonally to that direction, the fluid becomes more rigid, and you can move or manipulate, it,’ he told PopSci. 

Taking to his garage, the physicist shaved iron off a shovel and mixed the filings with engine oil before trying to move the solution with a magnet.