Using Hair to Remove Crude Oil

June 21, 2010 at 5:37 pm Leave a comment

Most people think of hair and fur as garbage, or compost. But it turns out to be a great natural alternative to oil containment booms.

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And Thomas Azwell has designed a process to bioremediate oil soaked hair mats into nutrient rich soil enhancer.

“Used on a large scale after the 2007 Cosco Busan tanker oil spill in San Francisco Bay, hair mats effectively remove crude from sandy shores. “Within the first 72 hours these hair mats were just slurping up oil,” the group’s cofounder Lisa Gautier said to Audubon”

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“Hair is very efficient at collecting oil out of the air, off surfaces like your skin and out of the water, even petroleum oil.”