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               Cotton May be Eco-Friendly Way to Clean Oil Spills

   by VOA News

   Nearly three years after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig
   spilled nearly 5-million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, oil
   is still being found on Gulf beaches and coastal marshes. Officials
   have used everything from straw, to wool, to feathers to try to soak it
   up.
   Now, scientists at Texas Tech University report that unprocessed raw
   cotton may provide the ideal clean-up solution for crude oil spills.
   Seshadri Ramkumar and his colleagues studied the properties of low
   micronaire cotton, a poor quality fiber that does not hold dye well and
   has little commercial value for textiles. They found it could absorb
   and hold more than 30 times its weight in crude oil, and its natural
   waxiness keeps water out. "In contrast to synthetic sorbents," Ramkumar
   says, those properties make this type of cotton "an
   ecologically-friendly sorbent for oil spill cleanups."
   The study is one of the first to provide scientific data on raw
   cotton's use in crude oil spills. Published by the American Chemical
   Society (Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research), it was funded in
   part by the industry group, Cotton Incorporated.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/cotton-is-ecofriendly-way-to-clean-oi
   l-spills/1661827.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/cotton-is-ecofriendly-way-to-clean-oil-spills/1661827.html