Breaking Down Oil for Dummy Environmentalists

surfactants and oil

Every time you reach for the bottle (or box) of laundry detergent, you're hoping that the chemicals in the mixture will break down natural oils. You don't have to have spilled motor oil (or vegetable oil) on your shirt; your skin oils are just as capable of generating a stain and holding onto a little grime. The chemists who concocted your detergent already know "What Chemicals Break Down Oil?" If anyone doesn't, though, they're not going to get much help from the Sciencing.com post by Mark Fitzpatrick.

Drawing heavily on that PolySci degree of his, Fitzpatrick (already a six-time DotD winner) explained that the chemicals that break down oil are, in order, dispersants, bioremediation, "sun-water chemical breakdown," and "cleaning solutions." What a load of hooey...

Nowhere in his post does Fitzpatrick mention the most basic facts about breaking down oil: oil, whether vegetable oil, skin oil, or petroleum; is an organic compound. Therefore, only other organic compounds will break down oil. These compounds are soaps and surfactants, which enhance the dissolution of oils in water and allow it to disperse.

Apparently hung up on oil spills, Mark went straight to the technology of cleaning spills, starting – for unknown reasons – with a proprietary product that creates "micelles" (beloved of acne soaps). That's all he has to say about dispersants. Next, he babbles about bioremediation, which he describes as

"...using bacterial or microorganism colonies to eat the oil."

Strange, given that the assignment was to describe chemicals. Next, Fitzpatrick moves on to "sun-water chemical breakdown," in which he informs us that,

"Solar heat breaks down most chemicals with both radiation and light waves. Supplementing this process is that warm water helps thin out oil, allowing oil to stretch over a larger surface area. This makes the oil thin enough that sunlight can easily penetrate the oil matter [sic]. Over a period of weeks, the warm water and hot sun will have broken down the oil to simple hydrocarbons."

Yeah, he said "oil matter," whatever that is. Once again, he's not talking about chemicals! Finally, Mark mentions what he calls "cleaning solutions." We suppose he's talking about Dawn® dishwashing detergent. The closest he gets to mentioning chemicals this time is, "...the best way to break down the oil is with soap and water." Well, at least soap can be considered a chemical... though Fitzpatrick doesn't seem to know that "soap" is the salt of a fatty acid. Given that he didn't actually complete his assignment, most likely because he had no idea "what chemicals break down oil" and his readers still don't know, we feel fully justified in awarding Mark another Dumbass of the Day.

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