Can Nanotechnology Help with the Oil Spill in the Gulf?
When I saw the initial news reports on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, after I shook my head in despair for that region already struck by Hurricane Katrina just five years ago, I thought of how long it would take for people to turn to nanotechnology for a possible solution to clean up the mess. I guess I wasn’t the only person to think this as the blog Nanopatents and Innovations pulled out at least four patents and/or innovations in nanomaterials that address the cleanup or remediation of oil spills. Now as anyone who is familiar with how technologies are developed knows it is a far cry from securing a patent to getting it do something in the real world. So to get a sense of where we really are I wanted to get the perspective of my colleague, Tim Harper, who in addition to being a noted expert on the commercialization of nanotechnologies also has devoted his attention to the use of nanotechnologies in cleantech including its remediation capabilities, leading him to his presentati
