You don't have to be a physicist to know that when needles scatter, they are best retrieved with a magnet. However, one physics professor decided to apply this simple principle to oil spills. Reading about the ineffective and expensive clean-up of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, Pireas Technical Institute (TEI) professor George Nicolaides wondered if there was a better alternative.

The result was CleanMag, a technology consisting of a magnetic, granular substance that sucks in oil through its pores and a conveyer belt system that retrieves the result. The EU -funded project is now at a crucial testing stage.

On May 15, 2002, Nicolaides and Pireas TEIs Department of Physics, Chemistry and Materials Technology launched a prototype oil spill cleanup vessel, the CleanMagI - Nancy. Built by trial and error in Perama over two years, the 19x4.5m boat features a magnetic conveyer belt system, a cannon to shoot CleanMag material onto spills and a storage tank for collected waste. It functions in winds up to 6 Beaufort.

Nicolaides is now awaiting permission from the Ministry of Merchant Marine to spill some 50 litres of oil in the sea - only to retrieve them again as an experiment. The CleanMag I-Nancy wouldn't have been possible without a 1999 grant from the EU Directorate of Environment LIFE programme, which provided 500,000 euros for the three-year project of producing CleanMag and building the conveyer belt boat.

Growing accident risk
There isn't much time to spare, according to the energetic professor from Lesvos. Though Greece has experienced only "micro-spills" till now, its oil traffic has increased in the past 3-5 years, with the development of new Caspian oil sources. Moreover, local oil traffic will increase dramatically with the imminent construction of the Burgas (Bulgaria)-Alexandroupolis (Greece) pipeline. Its not hard to imagine a huge tanker carrying between 50,000 and 200,000 tonnes of oil having an accident. Nicolaides notes, "If something like that happens in the Aegean, all the islands are going to be destroyed for the next decade."

Unsatisfactory alternatives
According to the professor, traditional methods of oil collection are not good enough. The current practice, undertaken by 3 to 4 private companies and the Greek Coast Guard, is to rush to expanding spill sites and try to contain the oil with booms. Then, floating skimmer pumps are set up, but if there are waves, more water is sucked in than oil. Skimmer boats also a part of the current technology similarly require calm seas.

In any case, usually a 1 to 2mm-thick slick remains. The final response is to dump chemical dispersants - sometimes very toxic detergents - to obliterate the oil. Hydrocarbons are thus broken-down and tiny oil droplets sink to the seabed. "After a while, the sea is clean," says Nicolaides, "but if you eat fish from there or see samples of the sediments, you can find oil." Nicolaides attributes the change in the appearance of waters off of Evia Island just after the 1999 Eurobulker oil spill there, to such chemicals. "The sea resembled watery, French coffee," he remembers.

Other conventional alternatives have drawbacks too. In situ burning of oil requires a distance from shorelines. Placing and collecting absorbing blankets on the shoreline is inefficient. Agents that solidify the oil don't always work. While bioremediation, which became popular after the Exxon Valdez spill, may be hazardous to humans because of its oil-devouring microbes.

CleanMag in action
Recyclable CleanMag may offer a suitable alternative. First patented in 1996 by Nicolaides under a contract with Pireas TEI Pireas, CleanMag is a substance made up of a plastic, hard, sponge-like, porous material resembling lentils, chickpeas or rice. It is made up of polymers that are sprayed with natural magnetic material during fabrication.

Ideally, in the case of a spill, CleanMag would be dumped onto the oil, either by helicopter or by boats such as the CleanMagI-Nancy. The CleanMag granules absorb the oil through their pores, taking in up to six-times their weight and always remaining afloat. As the magnetic CleanMag granules stick together, a crust of CleanMag plus the oil forms, slowing the spills expansion. The only requirement is that the oil - be it crude, light or banker - must have a liquid or honey viscosity (normally between 10-30 degrees C) for the capillary, mechanical action to work.

Finally, a CleanMag boat, with its magnetic conveyer belt, collects the filled CleanMag granules (UV rays break down the perhaps 2-5% of CleanMag material that escape.) A boat like Nancy can collect up to 35 tonnes per hour. In case of spillage in shallow waters (2m to 20cm deep), a smaller raft-type vessel would be employed.

For beach clean-ups, the Ministry of Development has sponsored a project developing vehicles for the dispersal and collection of CleanMag on shorelines in the event of a spill.

Future prospects
Nicolaides hopes to test the first CleanMag ship in two places: Aspropyrgos in the Attica coastline, whose oil refineries and spills up to 400 tonnes large put it in the eye of the cyclone and Santorini Island, which is very close to the centre of international tanker routes. He counts the Union of Santorini Boatmen, who will participate in the experiments, among the growing number of those sharing his vision.

Despite some local resistance to the new technology, the professor expects a private company will eventually purchase the CleanMag patent for mass scale production. Companies are awaiting the TEI teams legwork and market development first. As for the prototype boats namesake, it was named after Nicolaides seven-year-old daughter.