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This will be a short talk for 30 min max. highlighting some of the research problems that we can try to address related to cleaning of crude oil spills. About 7-14 % of the extracted oil is lost in spills of various kinds causing major environmental hazards and resource wastage. Oil spills spread on water surface very fast due to various forces acting on the spreading liquid on liquid layer. This has been an intriguing problem for scientists and engineers due to the challenges inherent to this unique problem. Once thin layer of oil is spread on water surface it is difficult to recover the oil from the vast expanses of ocean. The questions related to these are : would it be possible to arrest the spreading? even if arrested, would it be possible to collect the oil effectively?

A second problem related to oil spill is: marine animals and aquatic birds getting wet in the oil. This become a problem of fluid wetting solid surfaces especially porous and “oil-loving” feathers of birds. Although there are some methods being considered including the use of magnetic iron particles to remove oil adhered to the feathers, these are still not effective enough.