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SEPARATING
OIL WATER from
Sharon Tiffin/News staff
Vicki Kleu, a Grade 11 Lambrick Park secondary student, holds a beaker of used oil as an example of what her biodegradable oil spill pad can soak up. Kleu recently won the Vancouver Island Regional Science Fair with an oil spill pad she developed and is in the process of seeking a patent.
Lambrick Park student invents biodegradable pads for use in oil spills Kyle Slavin News staff
A 16-year-old Saanich student is giving Mother Nature a run for her money by using an innovative science fair project to potentially improve the health of the natural environment. Vicki Kleu spent less than $10 on materials to invent a biodegradable adsorbent
pad that could revolutionize clean-up of marine oil spills. “If you go down to the water you can always see a thin film of oil that’s on the water. No one really thinks that small amount is going to damage, they think, ‘It’s a small amount, it’ll be fine.’ No, it harms the ecosystem,” said Kleu, a Grade 11 Lambrick Park secondary student. “It’s a part of protecting our environment that needs to be done.” Her functioning prototype pads – called Oil RiDD’rs – are made of natural fibres and have proven to hold 50 times their weight of outboard motor oil. With Kleu’s design, oil clings to the sur-
face of the pads in a process called adsorption (as opposed to absorption, where one substance permeates the volume of another substance), allowing at least 95 per cent of the oil to be recovered. “(The pad) could be rolled up, stored – it’s not very big. So it could just get thrown out onto the spill,” Kleu said. “Because the fibres prefer the oil to the water, they don’t let go of the oil – they prefer to hold onto it. It could sit there for a while, even with wave action, and it picks up more oil than water.” Cheryl Nigh, a teacher at Gordon Head middle school, is Kleu’s science fair mentor. She says “the sky’s the limit” with
Kleu’s invention, as it is, on the whole, a better oil spill clean-up system than any other synthetic or natural product on the market. “This, for me, is going to be the highlight of my career,” Nigh said. “I don’t think I’ll ever come across another science fair student that matches Vicki’s dedication so well. … She was able to step back and look for a simple solution to a big problem. Based on her science knowledge, she was able to see the forest for the trees.” PLEASE SEE: Student, teacher seek patent, Page A6
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