VOA常速英语:还在为打翻的油瓶发愁吗？吸油神器来啦！

If you were a casual observer watching scientist Seth Darling work，it would be easy to miss the low-tech but groundbreaking invention he has concocted in his brightly lit laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory.In this non-descriptive setting lies the future of sponges.

Yes, I mean it looks real simple when you demonstrate it, right? You just stick it down there and it works, but behind that is a lot of work."

While these dark-colored pieces of foam do not look like cutting-edge technology,Darling explains that what we can see with the human eye is not the major breakthrough.

It is what is in and on the foam matters.

After we do our treatment to it, and we create this Oleo Sponge, you put it on there and it’s got a voracious appetite for oil.It just soaks that oil right up."

Darling explains the treatment they gives the foam that “voracious appetite” is the real breakthrough,and underlying technology Darling and his associates developed called:“Sequential Infiltration Synthesis, or SIS.”

SIS works at the nano level.When metal oxide atoms "with complicated nanostructures" are infused throughout the fibers of the foam,it gives it the extremely effective quality of allowing the foam to bind with the oil in the water, separating the two liquids.

The breakthrough could dramatically change the way oil spills are cleaned up, particularly oil beneath water surface.

Once it all goes down below the surface of the water and you have clouds of droplets under the surface,I’m not aware of any technology today that can actually clean those up, and Oleo Sponge can."

The Oleo Sponge does not just clean up the oil — it saves it, too.

Oil spilled into the water is usually burned off or rendered unusable after cleanup efforts,but the Oleo Sponge can collect and deposit the oil for further use.

The sponge itself can also be re-used and recycled, qualities that have brought a flood of interest.

It’s a wide variety of companies that are interested in it.We’ve got inquiries from about 100-plus companies in the last few days.”

While oil spill cleanup in bodies of water is the most clearly identifiable use for the Oleo Sponge,the SIS technology behind it could offer breakthroughs in a variety of other ways.

This application is just the tip of the iceberg.

An iceberg Seth Darling and other scientists at Argonne are still delving into.

Kane Farabaugh, VOA news, Chicago, Illinois.