Cactus-inspired material cleans oily water (BBC)

By Simon Redfern
Reporter, BBC News

Arrays of tiny copper spikes can clean oil from water, mimicking the way cacti pull water out of desert air.

Chinese researchers had noticed that cone-shaped cactus spines harvest water from air pushing it to their base.

Copying Nature's design, they used conical copper needles to separate tiny oil drops from dirty water - a problem existing methods struggle with.

The scientists, who are based in Beijing, have reported their results in the journal Nature Communications.

The discovery points the way to a new method for addressing environmental problems like oil spill clean up, with the artificial spines capturing microscopic droplets of oil underwater, continuously transporting them to the base of the sheet of spikes.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23574410
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130806/ncomms3276/full/ncomms3276.html



While this is neat science, it's not hard to foresee it leading to oceans full of unrecovered silicone and copper.