School of Engineering and Design

EEA_6_009

Innovation and Enterprise 2014-15

Project 1
Oil spills and Mush-Matt
Class number: 6
Class Tutor: Pedro Diaz
Team number: 2
Team members:
Student number

First name

Surname

3024041

Ahmed

Shehab

3130522

Mohammed

Lawa

3104705

Younis

Arif

3127529

Sukainah

Dashti

3231794

Adel

Al-Enazi

Table of Contents
Section 1 Outline of Oil spills............................................................................... 3

Introduction to oil spills................................................................................... 3

Causes and current solutions..........................................................................3

Effect on the enviroment and economics........................................................3

The solution is related to the teams course because:....................................3

Plan of action to resolve the problem:.............................................................3

The likely consumers of this solution would be:..............................................5

Processes and methods used by the team:.....................................................5

Section 2 Reflection............................................................................................ 8
2a. Comments on the teamwork............................................................................8
2b. Comments on individual performance.............................................................8
2c. How the learning may have been improved....................................................9
References............................................................................................................. 9

Section 1 Outline of the problem

The teams chosen problem is oil spills. Oil spills is defined as the release of
crude oil into the environment such as: oceans, coastal areas and also on
lands.

The problem exists because of the accidents occurring in drilling rigs,

platforms, pipes, and tankers. Oil spills also occur because of oil tankers/ships
breaking or colliding. For example the blow out that happened on the
Deepwater Horizon oil rig located in the Gulf of Mexico. 4.9 Million barrels of
oil was leaked to the ocean causing an environmental disaster. People are still
affected by the problem till present day. Cleaning up an oil spill may take
weeks, months or even years.

The effect of crude oil on environment depends on variety of factors; such as

the quality, quantity and the type of spill. The problem is affect marine life,
birds, the coastal areas such as beaches, human communities such as fishing
and tourism.

The solution is related to the teams course because:

As petroleum engineers, a part from extracting the hydrocarbon and processing we also
have responsibility to solve the issues that caused by our industry. Cleaning up the oil spill is
one of the difficult challenges that time to time the industry faces.

Plan of action to resolve the problem:

Mushrooms might be useful in case of using them in oil industry. This can be valuable by
having a good knowledge of mushroom i.e. study the feature of mushroom and knowing how
they may affect the main issue which is the oil spills. The most interesting fact about
mushroom and related to the problem is that they are able to absorb the oil efficiently and
this was tested experimentally as you can see below. Obviously, mushrooms can float on
water and this is an important key to solve the problem in case of offshore spill. Previous
experiments indicate that the mushrooms are tolerant to salt water and this made it a good
choice to absorb only oil spills without water.
Fungal roots of mushroom called mycelia. They are spreading outward to create
underground cells which penetrate the soil. The single colony of mushroom can cover a
huge area and travel several inches a day. Mycelium produces enzymes and acid that can
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disintegrate and break down the hydrocarbon and pollutants. Generally, there are more oil
spills than mycelium available currently. However, much mycelium is needed and fortunately
tests conducted by researchers who have published their results show mushroom can be
grown and generated at an exponential rate (Paul S., 2010).
We have conducted an experiment to test the ability of mushroom to absorb oil. Salted water
and cooking oil were added to a container. After a while, a layer of oil consisted on the top
and this is because the density differences between the water and oil. Fresh mushrooms
were added to the container and they floated on the surface. About an hour later, the
mushrooms absorbed most the oil as you can see below.

Design of Mush-Matt:
Mush-Matt is a mushroom filled net that can adapt to onshore and offshore spillage as
necessary, Mush-Matt can float on the surface of the water allowing it to easily absorb
petroleum from the surface of the water, Mush-Matt can also be place on contaminated sea
shores and will experience rapid growth as it
absorbs and digests petroleum. Mush-Matt is
also re-usable and does not leave any traces
of petroleum behind. The mushrooms do not
leak
and
oil
absorbed
under
any
circumstances.

The likely consumers of this solution would be:

The extracting hydrocarbon always has been a very challenging and sophisticated operation.
As a result of this oil spill happen quite often accidently or unintentionally. After developing
the idea and studying it in greater details the consumer target would be the giant oil
company such as the BP, Chevron and Shell also environmental agencies in the affected
area. As soon the idea put it in to practice and practicality of the mush-matt proven in the
hostile environment and ocean surface. The product would be available in market.

Processes and methods used by the team:

The Double Diamond:

The first method the team has used to come up with a topic to investigate was
the double diamond method. Starting up by broadening the research area and
looking in to some interesting topics such as extracting hydrocarbons from the
Rocky Mountains, hydraulic fracking and oil spills. The following stage was
defining our search area with cleaning up oil spills. We started investigating in
various solutions and coming up with new ideas. The next stage was to come
up with various solutions such as magnetising the oil with Nano particles,
floating separation platform and sponges. We developed the idea of using
mushrooms into MushMatt.

Innowiz

The second technique was used is Innowiz, first part of the technique is to identify
the problem, the questions that were asked is What is the most challenging problem
in the petroleum field at the moment? The answer proposed was oil spills.
The idea generation stage involved creating ideas and new concept to solute the
problem of oil spills.so idea we came up with
Problem Definition
were things such as magnetising the oil wit
Nano particles, the concept of this solution
Idea Generation
was very interesting by in theory was not very
economic. Another solution was to create a
Idea Selection
floating platform which separated the oil and
the water and are final solution was to absorb
Idea Communication
the oil with a material such as mushrooms.
The idea selection process was to pick one of the topics from the ideas the group
generated. The idea which was chosen was to use mushroom. The invention of
Mushmat was created.
The idea communication process involved designing a way of communicate our idea
and findings in a fun and easy to understand way. We created a presentation slides
that are interesting easy to follow.

The mind map

Time Boxing and tasks

Time boxing was very important in keeping track of our daily achievements and gave
us a realistic sense of our productivity, time boxing allowed us to organise our
meetings and layout for the project duration. The tasks were spread out across the
group members according to who felt most comfortable with them. There were no
automatically assigned tasks and as such that made the whole team very relaxed
with the project. All the members of the team fully backed the idea of Mush-Matt and
enjoyed working together to achieve this successful project.

Section 2 Reflection
2a. Comments on the teamwork:
This project shows the ability of each member in the group to work as a part of the
team. Teamwork played an important role in the enhancement of our design as well
as covering the different aspects of the project and putting the work together.
Professional advices were sought from academics and technicians, many times, to
discuss some of the challenges encountered.

2b. Comments on individual performance:

Each member of the group has different skills which were utilised in order to optimise
and maximise the success of this project.
Sukainah Dashti, the team leader, had great control of the team. She organised and
managed all the meetings. She was constantly punctual and always came with
interesting news, such as new ideas or solutions. She was very passionate in finding
the required information and conducting research.
Younis Arif provided us with research on the oil spills and materials for the design.
He was always enthusiastic, punctual, eager and always willing to contribute to the
group. He contributed to write the report and shared a lot of his experienced
knowledge with regards to the operation of the oil spills.
Mohammad Lawa, who previously worked as a chef, gave us the idea of the
mushrooms as a good absorber of oil and pointed out that it also floats on water, and
came up with good solutions to some of the challenges faced. When it came to
punctuality, he was on time and was very determined. He created the whatsapp
group which led to efficient communication.
Ahmed Shehab worked on the physical and chemical aspects of Mush-Matt. He
designed the Mush-Matt. He provided a critical point of view which gave us a better
outside look into our design. Punctuality was always on his side. He was puissant
and passionate who would never take no as an answer.
Adel Al-Enazi was a very energetic and a great team player. He came up with the
idea of the experiment. He was always optimistic and gave us a lot of motivation. He
made the logo for the project and developed the evolution of Mush-Matt, our final
design. He also contributed to finalising the presentation and the project report.

2c. How the learning may have been improved:

Despite the fact that the team spent a plenty amount of time with the project, the team might
have improved by arranging more meetings during the previous weeks to develop the quality
of the solution suggested. Different skills as research skills may have been developed as not
a lot of information was available about our project and design being innovative.

Further steps have been taken in consideration such as taking our design to
laboratories for additional testing and estimating the economic aspects of the project,
but due to the limit in time, there were not done. The time period of this assignment
left us with a bit of disappointment as we knew we could improve the design of our
invention, but with the short period this was not possible.

References:

Paul Stamets. (2010). The Petroleum Problem. Available:

http://www.fungi.com/blog/items/the-petroleum-problem.html. Last accessed 9th Nov. 2014.

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