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.

 

A Van Buren Township hazardous-waste landfill operator, slated to receive up to 36 tons of low-level radioactive waste from a Pennsylvania fracking company, announced Monday that it will suspend receipt of such materials from all oil and gas operations pending a review by the state.

EQ, a USEcology company, made its determination as Gov. Rick Snyder announced plans to form a panel of experts to look at Michigan’s standards for disposing of low-level radioactive waste. EQ has accepted the waste — known as technologically enhanced, naturally occurring radioactive materials, or TENORM — from Michigan and other states at its Wayne Disposal landfill, located between Willow Run Airport and I-94 near Belleville.

 

July 31, 2014

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation today released the details of its comprehensive rulemaking proposal to improve the safe transportation of large quantities of flammable materials by rail - particularly crude oil and ethanol - in the form of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and a companion Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM).

 

The NPRM proposes enhanced tank car standards, a classification and testing program for mined gases and liquids and new operational requirements for high-hazard flammable trains (HHFT) that include braking controls and speed restrictions. Specifically, within two years, it proposes the phase out of the use of older DOT 111 tank cars for the shipment of packing group I flammable liquids, including most Bakken crude oil, unless the tank cars are retrofitted to comply with new tank car design standards. The ANPRM seeks further information on expanding comprehensive oil spill response planning requirements for shipments of flammable materials. Both the NPRM and ANPRM are available for review here and will be open for 60 days of public comment. Given the urgency of the safety issues addressed in these proposals, PHMSA does not intend to extend the comment period.