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Soap Developed with Magnetic Properties

Soap suds (Jo Naylor/Flickr)Researchers at University of Bristol in the U.K. and Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France have developed a soap with iron salts that can be controlled by magnets. The discovery is expected to lead to products useful in cleaning up oil spills at sea, which can be better captured and removed after use than currently available products.

The research, which appears online in the journal Angewandte Chemie, also includes co-authors from Universität zu Köln in Germany, Central China Normal University in Wuhan, and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, U.K. (paid subscription required).

The Bristol team, led by chemistry professor Julian Eastoe, produced its magnetic soap by dissolving iron in inert surfactant materials — the industrial name for soaps — composed of chloride and bromide ions, similar to those found in household mouthwash or fabric conditioner. The addition of the iron added metallic properties to the soap particles.

To test these properties, the team introduced a magnet to a test tube containing the new soap beneath a less dense organic solution. The magnet caused the iron-rich soap to overcome both gravity and surface tension between the water and oil, to levitate through the organic solution and reach the source of the magnetic field.

The researchers at Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) a center for neutron science and home to an intense neutron source, helped better understand the science behind these properties. When surfactants are added to water they are known to form tiny particles in clumps called micelles. ILL’s researchers used a technique called neutron scattering to confirm that it was this clumping of the iron-rich surfactant that brought about its magnetic properties.

This research also used facilities provided though one of the University of Bristol’s industry collaborators, the Krüss Surface Science Centre (KSSC).  Krüss GmbH is a German manufacturer of instrumentation for surface science analysis that provides a testing facility hosted in Bristol’s chemistry department.

Eastoe notes that the discovery may not be immediately applicable to household goods, but “by proving that magnetic soaps can be developed, future work can reproduce the same phenomenon in more commercially viable liquids for a range of applications from water treatment to industrial cleaning products.”

Read more: Microbes Reduced Adverse Impact of BP, Exxon Valdez Spills

Photo: Jo Naylor/Flickr

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