monolithic aerogels of high molecular weight polyethylene (mw= 3x106- 6x106 g/mol) have been prepared by solvent extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide from thermoreversible gels prepared in decalin. these low density and highly porous aerogels present an apparent porosity up to 90%. the aerogel morphology observed by scanning electron microscopy (sem) is characterized by spherulitic stru...

Oil spillage has been a major environmental problem in Nigeria for more than two decades. Between 1976 and 1996 Nigeria recorded a total of 4835 oil spill incidents, which resulted in a loss of 1.9 million barrels of oil into the environment. From 2006 to 2008 reported oil spill occurrences amounted to 1260, where 40,000 barrels of oil from Mobil platform off the Akwa Ibom coast were spilt, cau...

This paper reports the findings from the experimental study of an intelligent system driven by Neural Network (NN), Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) for knowledge discovery and oil spillage risk management. Application software was developed in an environment characterized by 11Ants Analytics, Matrix Laboratory (MatLab), Microsoft Excel, SPSS and GraphPadInstat as frontend engines; M...

This paper evaluated the oil spillage risk in the waters near the island of Changxing in Dalian (China) based on the established risk assessment index. Four wind regimes (windless, northerly wind, westerly wind and southerly wind) were selected as weather conditions for the dynamic prediction of oil drift. If an oil spill occurs near the Koumen (a place near the island of Changxing), the foreca...

Oil pollution is in the forefront ofpublic attention because of the recent series of oil spills from tankers such as the Argo Merchant. Oil spillage frequently destroys the marine flora and fauna; the most striking single effect is the oiling of large numbers of marine birds. For example, as many as 30,000 birds died after the grounding of the Torrey Canyon at Seven Stones Reef, Great Britain i...

Monolithic aerogels of high molecular weight polyethylene (Mw= 3x106- 6x106 g/mol) have been prepared by solvent extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide from thermoreversible gels prepared in decalin. These low density and highly porous aerogels present an apparent porosity up to 90%. The aerogel morphology observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is characterized by spherulitic stru...

In this study a total of 26 microorganisms were isolated for lipase production. Yeast strain possessing the highest lipase activity was identified as Sporobolomyces salmonicolor, and subjected to mutagenesis to increase the enzyme production. Effect of pH, temperature and medium composition on lipase production was studied. Sporobolomyces salmonicolor a novel yeast was isolated from oil spillag...

To address oil spillage and chemical leakage accidents, the development of efficient sorbent materials is of global importance for environment and water source protection. Here we report on a new type of carbon nanofiber (CNF) aerogels as efficient sorbents for oil uptake with high sorption capacity and excellent recyclability. Importantly, the oil uptake ability of the CNF aerogels can be main...

This paper introduces an ongoing EU research project called EU-MOP, which involves the design and evaluation of an intelligent and efficient robot system to respond to oil spills. The EU-MOP project addresses both unit and system level (i.e. unit design and emergency response topics) so as to draft a complete proposal/solution regarding oil spillage. The paper defines the objectives of the proj...