Ocean Rescue 911

Overview

Objectives/Goals Use ferrofluid and a neodymium magnet to help separate oil from water and see if increasing the amount of ferrofluid will improve the efficiency of the oil spill cleanup. Methods/Materials Take 3 Petri dishes and label them 0, 1, and 5 for the number of ferrofluid drops to be used. Put 9 ml of colored water in all 3 Petri dishes and add 2.5 ml of mineral oil in the middle of the water using a pipette. Put 0, 1, and 5 drops of ferrofluid in the matching labelled Petri dishes. Take the neodymium magnet and put it in a Ziploc bag, and move through the contents of the Petri dish labelled 0. Take the magnet out of the plastic bag and put it in a new bag for the Petri dishes labelled 1 and 5. Now empty the contents of the Petri dish into a graduated cylinder and let the oil set on the top. Record the volume of leftover oil for each Petri dish. Repeat the above procedure 2 more times, and calculate the efficiency using the formula: efficiency equals 1 minus volume of leftover oil over 2.5 ml. Results The average efficiency of the oil spill cleanup using no ferrofluid was 12%, 1 drop was 36%, 5 drops was 44%. Conclusions/Discussion Using ferrofluid and a neodymium magnet helped to separate oil from water. But increasing the amount of ferrofluid did not make a significant difference in the efficiency of the oil spill cleanup.

Competition history

• CSEF 2015 Environmental Engineering · Entry J1009

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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