Research Projects

The ever-increasing oil demand has lead to an increase in the number of incidents related to oil spills which are possessing severe environmental impacts. Oil spills have a catastrophic impact on the aquatic ecosystem, environment, and human beings. Tradition methodologies for the cleaning of oil spills can be classified into three categories a) Physical (Oil booms, skimmers, and sorption) b) Chemical (In-situ burning, dispersants) c) Bioremediation (Degradation of oil using microorganisms). However, each of the methods has its own pros and cons. In-situ burning leads to the addition of carbon emissions while booms and skimmers are not suitable for oil layers with thickness less than 6 mm. Sorbents are projected as a clean and green solution to this problem since it does not involve the usage of any harmful chemicals directly into the water bodies and can be reused. In the present proposal, we wish to synthesize doped carbon nanotube aerogel in a continuous process using floating catalyst chemical vapour deposition. The synthesized carbon macrostructure i.e. aerogel would be utilized for the remediation of oil spills that possess a severe threat to the marine ecosystems. In addition, surface modification using iron oxide would be the major focus of the proposal to enhance the uptake capacity of the aerogel.