Scientists from Ufa have invented a sorbent that absorbs harmful substances during an oil spill

The Academy of Sciences of Bashkortostan has created an innovative reagent for cleaning spilled oil, which reduces the cost of cleaning water bodies and soil from oil products by one and a half times, Raikhana Kunakova, vice-president of the Academy and supervisor of the development, told Interfax.

The sorbent, which was invented by scientists from Ufa, absorbs harmful substances contained in oil and destroys them, forming water and carbon monoxide.

“All fragments of the sorbent are not toxic to nature, so they can be safely used to clean up spilled oil, removing everything that is contained there: heavy metals, organic compounds, radionuclides,” said Raikhana Kunakova. “After treatment with a destructor sorbent, there is no longer a need to remove or dispose of waste from places of contamination, the final elements can remain there, they no longer pose a threat to the population and animals.”

To create the sorbent, available domestic components were used, and its cost is low compared to foreign analogues. The Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences noted that the reagent has “very good” prospects for use and industrial production. Rosprirodnadzor of Bashkiria has already issued permission for use, the sorbent is undergoing extensive testing.

Work on the creation of the reagent under the leadership of Doctor of Chemical Sciences Vladimir Dokichev was carried out by employees of the Academy of Sciences of Bashkiria, the scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences of Ufa and the innovative engineering center "BashInnoTek" .

As Greenpeace previously reported , more than 30 million barrels of oil fall onto the earth annually as a result of the activities of the Russian oil industry. In 2016, several dozen wild boars died due to an oil spill near Kurgan. In August, in the Volgograd region, an oil slick appeared in the waters and on the coastline of the Volga River; the damage caused to the soil amounted to 19.5 million rubles. Earlier, in March, an oil spill from an oil pipelineoccurred near the village of Ekhabi in northern Sakhalin. According to the public organization "Sakhalin Environmental Watch", about 300 tons of oil entered the environment as a result of the spill.