Near instantaneous gelation of crude oil using naphthalene diimide based powder gelator

Abstract

Phase-selective organogelators (PSOGs) that congeal oil from water have emerged as a promising alternative to the existing methods of containing marine oil spills. However, all PSOGs reported to date suffer from one prohibitive limitation: a poor dispersibility in the oil phase. Consequently, when used as dry powder, these PSOGs take many hours to congeal oil, and instead have to be applied after dissolving in, or being wetted with, toxic and inflammable solvents. We report a naphthalene diimide based gelator that when applied in powder form can solidify heavy crude oil from water in seconds. The exceptional mechanical strength of the resultant gel, easy recoverability of oil, ability to congeal oil at 0 °C, and the negligible aqueous solubility and biotoxicity makes our compound by far the best reported PSOG for oil spill remediation.