1. Cleaning Oil Spills
1. Introduction
Recently, I have become very aware of human misuse of our earth’s
environment. I think humans have not been very responsible and nice to
our planet. We are polluting the land, air and water at a scary rate. One
of the major causes of water pollution is oil spills. There are many oil
spills around the world and each spill kills thousands of birds, aquatic and
other forms of life. Oil spills are much more common than what I thought
when I started this project. In Table 1, I summarize some of the oil
spills during the past two decades.
Table 1: Some examples of oil spills
Date Place Estimated
amount of oil
spilled in water
(million gallons)
March 24, 1989 Valdez, Alaska, USA 10
June 8, 1990 Off Galveston, Texas, 5.1
USA
January 23-27, 1991 Southern Kuwait 520
April 11, 1991 Genoa, Italy 42
May 28, 1991 Angola 70
March 2, 1992 Fergana Valley, 88
Uzbekistan
November 13, 2002 Spain 20
August- September, New Orleans, Louisiana 7
2005
December 7, 2007 South Korea 2.8
Oil spills affect our planet’s ecosystems and the damage may be
irreversible. For example, some species of animals have still not
recovered from the famous Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. Animals such
as, the Killer Whale, the Harbor Seal, the Common Loon, Cormorant, etc.
have still not recovered in the Prince William Sound in Alaska (AK).
Although, animals such as the Bald Eagle and River Otter have managed
to recover in the Prince William Sound, AK. The Valdez spill impacted

2. about 1,300 miles. This is more than the driving distance from Raleigh to
Chicago, Illinois. It took about 10,000 workers, 1,000 boats and 100
airplanes, the U.S. Navy, the Army, and the Air Force to clean up the
spill. The cost for Exxon to clean the mess was about $2.1 billion. The
amount of oil spilled in this accident was about 10 million gallons. Note
that the Valdez spill was not even among the top 10 worst spills! Just
imagine how much damage the top 10 did.
2. How to clean the oil spills?
As mentioned above, oil spills can be very bad for our planet and our
economy. So it is important to avoid them in the first place. But when the
spills occur it is important to clean them quickly and efficiently before they
spread too far into the lakes, rivers, oceans and other bodies of water.
People have used many methods to clean oil spills. Booms are one
method to clean spills. Booms are floating barriers that round up the oil and
lift oil off the water. Skimmers are machines that skim the oil from the top
of water. Sorbents are sponges that soak up the oil. There are many other
methods of cleaning oil spills. For more details on this subject, one may go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Methods_of_cleaning.
One of my goals for this project was to find a material that would
absorb oil without absorbing water. I knew that Styrofoam is used as a
packing material when shipping objects. This I assume is because it does not
absorb water. So in this experiment I wanted to see if Styrofoam can be
used for absorbing oil from a bowl containing water and oil.
Hypothesis: Styrofoam absorbs oil without absorbing water.
3. Material and Methods
Materials
• A large sheet of one inch thick Styrofoam.
• Ruler.
• Knife.

3. • Water.
• Lawn mower motor oil.
• Measuring cup.
• Fifteen 6” diameter “Heafty soak proof impermeable” party bowls.
• Three 18” long aluminum trays.
• Clock.
Methodology
First I placed 5 party bowls in each aluminum tray. I put these bowls
in aluminum trays to avoid any spills on the carpet during the experiment.
Two trays were labeled as control groups (Control-I, Control-II) and the
third tray was the Experiment group.
Each bowl in the Control-I got 1 ounce of lawn mower oil per bowl,
whereas each bowl in Control-II got 7 ounces of tap water. The bowls in
the Experiment group got 7 ounces of tap water and 1 ounce of lawn
mower oil each.
I placed two blocks of Styrofoam, a 3”x3”x1” block and a 3”x 2”x1”
block in each bowl of the Experiment group tray and in each bowl of the
Control-II tray. I didn’t place any Styrofoam blocks in Control-I tray
bowls. See the Photo (A) below.
Photo A: The Experiment, Control-I, and Control-II groups.

4. Why control groups?
The purpose of Control-I tray was to estimate how much oil
evaporated and/or was absorbed by the party bowl. Control-II tray was
to estimate how much water was absorbed by Styrofoam blocks, and/or
the party bowl and/or evaporated.
Why five bowls per group?
I used five bowls in each group because I did not expect to see the
same result from each bowl at the end of the experiment because
variability in my measurements. So I planned on taking the average (mean)
of the results from the five bowls.
Room temperature
I performed this experiment in the basement of our house where we
keep a constant temperature of 68o F.
4. Results
After forty-eight hours I decided to stop the experiment and see
how much oil was absorbed by the Styrofoam blocks in the Experiment
group. Visually I could tell that a lot of oil that was floating in each bowl
at the beginning of the experiment was absorbed by the Styrofoam
blocks. They turned green. See Photo B.
Photo B: The five bowls in the experiment group and the Styrofoam blocks which
turned green after absorbing oil.

5. Now I wanted to estimate the amount of oil that was absorbed by the
Styrofoam blocks. This is where the two control groups played an
important role.
From each of the ten bowls I carefully removed the two Styrofoam
blocks and placed them in an empty aluminum tray. I then emptied the
liquid from each bowl into a measuring cup to measure the volume of the
liquid in each bowl after 48 hours. The difference between the volumes
at the beginning of the experiment and at the end of the experiment
gave me the change in volume. As I expected the results from bowls
within each group varied.
Table 2: Experiment group
Bowl Beginning End Volume Difference in
Volume (Ozs) (Ozs) Volume (Ozs)
(X) (Y) (X-Y)
1 8 7.125 0.875
2 8 7.250 0.750
3 8 7.500 0.500
4 8 7.000 1.000
5 8 7.000 1.000
The mean change in volume per bowl in the Experiment group = 0.825
Ozs. This number represents the mean combined loss of water and oil in
48 hours per bowl in the Experiment group. To estimate the amount of
oil absorbed by the Styrofoam, I made use of the data from Control-I
and Control-II.
Table 3: Control-I Group
Bowl Beginning End Volume Difference in
Volume (Ozs) (Ozs) Volume (Ozs)
(X) (Y) (X-Y)
1 1 0.9 0.1
2 1 1.0 0.0
3 1 1.0 0.0
4 1 1.0 0.0
5 1 0.9 0.1

6. The mean change in volume of oil per bowl in 48 hours for Control-I
group = 0.04 Ozs. This number is not very accurate because my measuring
cup was not very precise. I made sure I emptied all the oil into the
measuring cup, but it was difficult to be perfect. Some very tiny amount
of the oil was stuck to the bowl. I approximated the numbers to the
nearest number on the measuring cup.
Table 4: Control-II Group
Bowl Beginning End Volume Difference in
Volume (Ozs) (Ozs) Volume (Ozs)
(X) (Y) (X-Y)
1 7 6.500 0.500
2 7 6.500 0.500
3 7 6.750 0.250
4 7 6.875 0.125
5 7 6.875 0.125
The mean change in volume of water per bowl in Control-II group
during 48 hours = 0.300 Ozs. This tells me that some amount of water is
lost during 48 hours. This could be either due to Styrofoam absorbing
the water, the bowl absorbing the water, and/or the water evaporated.
So, using all the above information, I estimate that the mean amount
of oil absorbed by Styrofoam block in the Experiment group
= 0.825 – 0.300 – 0.040 = 0.485 Ozs.
Since I started with 1 Oz of oil per bowl in the Experiment group,
therefore an average of 48.5% of oil was absorbed by the Styrofoam per
bowl in 48 hours.
5. Limitations and Conclusions
Although I tried to be very careful in measuring the amount of liquid
in each bowl, I may have made measurement errors. However, these
errors may have occurred equally among the experiment and the control
groups. So, they probably canceled out when subtracted the volumes in
the above equation. So I think my estimate of the mean amount of oil

7. absorbed by Styrofoam is not likely to be affected by the measurement
error.
From this experiment I learnt that materials such as the Styrofoam
could be useful for cleaning oil spills. However I do not know why it works.
I am sure there are better ways of cleaning oil spills without losing much
water while cleaning. Perhaps in Middle or in High School I will learn
about these things in a Chemistry class. I can’t wait to know why some
materials absorb oil, while some do not absorb oil!
References:
http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215471/oil_spills.htm
http://envirowonk.com/content/view/68/1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Methods_of_cleaning