Oil spills occur regularly around the world, but large, catastrophic disasters are much less common than small, everyday leaks.
Thousands of minor spills happen every year during routine tasks like refueling ships, pipeline leaks, or equipment failures on land. In the 1970s, there were between 70 and 100 large tanker spills annually. Fortunately, major marine spills from tanker accidents have dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s, with fewer than 10% per year.
Spills actually occur more frequently on land near storage tanks, industrial sites, and pipelines, but these get more attention because they spread fast and harm fragile ocean and coastal habitats.
Nature is also responsible – the single largest source of oil entering the oceans isn’t human error at all; it is natural seepage from rocks on the seafloor, accounting for about 40% to 50% of all oceanic oil.
Israelis probably remember February 2021, when its most severe and prominent modern disaster – a massive undisclosed spill (estimated at dozens to hundreds of tons of crude oil) sent heavy black tar washing ashore. It contaminated roughly 160 kilometers of Israel’s 195-km. coastline, from Rosh Hanikra to Ashkelon, severely harming marine wildlife like sea turtles and birds. They recall seeing masses of seabirds covered in tar and dying as a result of the environmental catastrophe.
But now, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beersheba are the first to develop a technology that captures and biologically breaks down oil pollution, treating crude oil and fuel pollution in marine and aquatic environments – a promising approach to both immediate containment and long-term environmental recovery.
The BGU technology is aimed at both the immediate capture of hydrocarbons and their longer-term degradation. Lab experiments showed that the material can adsorb approximately 80 to 100 times its own mass in crude oil, fuel, tar, and other hydrocarbons.
It was developed in the university’s Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory, led by Prof. Ariel Kushmaro and Dr. Danit Lisa Karsagi Biron of BGU’s Faculty of Engineering.
They created a porous aerogel made from cellulose fibers – that could be created from used egg cartons, old newspapers, and other paper materials – enriched with nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients support oil-degrading bacteria, making it possible for the material not only to capture pollutants but also to speed their subsequent biological breakdown.
The research team said they developed the aerogel using nutrient enrichment, freeze-drying, and pyrolysis (the thermal decomposition of organic materials at high temperatures – typically 300°C to 900°C) in the absence of oxygen, which prevents combustion.
Kushmaro told The Jerusalem Post in an interview that the aerogel provides a surface on which the bacteria can attach, bringing them into close contact with both the adsorbed hydrocarbons and the nutrients they require. In this way, the system creates conditions that support the microbial breakdown of the captured pollutants.
The process can even minimize the need to remove and dispose of contaminated adsorption material after treatment. The technology is currently undergoing patent recognition through BGN Technologies, BGU’s technology commercialization company.
Kushmaro earned his doctorate with distinction from Tel Aviv University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University’s Kevin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases and at Harvard University.
He joined BGU in 2001 and established the microbial ecology and microbial biotechnology lab, which focuses on investigating wastewater microbiology, marine microbial ecology, and the antimicrobial activity of various microorganisms.
The team published their innovative findings in Chemical Engineering Journal Advances under the title “Nutrient-supplemented carbonized aerogels for integrated oil adsorption and biodegradation in water.”
The most unusual aspect of the invention is not simply that an aerogel absorbs 100 times its weight, but the clever idea of turning the material into a little habitat for oil-eating bacteria, so that capture and biological cleanup happen together.
This study, from 1999 to 2002, began with identifying the environmental sensitivity of Israel’s Mediterranean coastline to marine oil spills.
It includes GIS sensitivity mapping (using geographic information systems to analyze and visualize the relative vulnerability of environmental, ecological, or cultural resources to specific human activities or natural disasters) and an analysis of the environmental vulnerability of Israel’s shoreline resources.
The study analyzes the main sources of risk for maritime accidents in the southeastern Mediterranean and develops scenarios for possible oil spill incidents, including an analysis of protection priorities for the various coastal ecosystems, in the event of a large spill.
“We described the form and structure of Israel’s coastline, and measured the physical features of oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers, and meteorological patterns that dominate and control the dynamics of the shorelines, as well as the potential for major oil spills. We also studied the different ways in which oil spills can affect natural ecosystems and socio-economic resources along the coastline of Israel,” Kushmaro said.
The study “aims at determining the relative sensitivity of different types of shoreline and prioritizing the different types of shoreline and coastal resources to be protected following a large oil spill,” he continued.
“We also presented and analyzed data in a clear and useful way for the scientific and environmental communities, and those national authorities responsible for oil spill preparedness and response.”
Sensitivity of the Israeli Mediterranean
One of the main conclusions of the study was that the sensitivity of the Israeli Mediterranean coastline to oil spills “could be considered moderate, compared with other fragile ecosystems. This is mainly because of the form of the sandy beaches and the high exposure of most types of beaches to energetic natural cleanup processes,” Kushmaro said.
“Still, along the southeastern Mediterranean coastline there are ecosystems, habitats, shoreline types and coastal resources that are sensitive to oil spills,” he continued.
The 195 km. of the Mediterranean shoreline of Israel – from the chalky limestone vertical cliffs of Rosh Hanikra on the border with Lebanon to the white sandy beaches of Erez that border the Gaza Strip – are exposed to winds and surface sea current systems and heavy traffic of oil tankers in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. These create a constant threat of a serious oil pollution incident, he said.
Tar has stained nearly 160 km. of Israel’s coastline, devastating nature and wildlife: “There are still tar remnants from the 2021 disaster on some beaches that was called the spill one of the most serious ecological disasters in the country’s history.”
Israeli environmental protection agencies admitted then that the government was underfunded to deal with such disasters, and that there was not adequate legislation in place to prevent such a disaster in the future.
Nitrogen and phosphorus are added to the aerogel, which is hydrophobic and made from cellular fibers with a large amount of surface area, Kushmaro explained.
“When placed on water, it floats on the surface, which causes oil to clump together. It takes between two and three weeks for the oil to disappear. If the oil spill is in the middle of the sea, it can be dropped from a plane. The cellular material itself is biodegradable. We don’t believe that waves, currents, and changing temperatures would interfere with the cleanup,” he said.
It’s unfortunate that the aerogel had not yet been invented to cope with the 2021 catastrophe.
“Even now, it will take a few years. It worked in the lab. Now a company has to be established to test it in the sea and produce the material. We have a world patent on it. Shell, the global British multinational energy and petrochemical company, has already contacted us to ask for information about it,” he continued.
“The Environmental Protection Ministry knows about it, but it’s completely new, and we need regulation.”
“We dream about the possibility that every ship will have the aerogel on board, so that if it causes an oil spill, it can immediately break it down. They can immediately cause it to disintegrate before it causes damage,” Kushmaro said.
Asked what experiment he and his team would most like to do next that they couldn’t accomplish in their lab study, he said: “We would want to do it in a polluted marina. There is oil in all the ports.”
The Environment and Climate Change portal is produced in cooperation with the Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The Jerusalem Post maintains all editorial decisions related to the content.
