Vacuuming up oil

NEW PRODUCT: The world’s first oil vacuum cleaner for shoreline rocks or other hard surfaces has been launched. The vacuum cleaner blows bark onto oil-soaked surfaces and then sucks the oil-soaked material back up again, a clean-up approach that is four times more efficient than conventional techniques. The product, called MOSE, was designed by master’s students in NTNU’s Department of Product Design.

The vacuum cleaner essentially automates work that is currently done by hand with a bucket and brush, and can be used with both bark and peat moss – or chemically produced materials.

The innovation has already tapped into several awards, and the students have formed a firm called Kaliber Industrial Design, which was one of seven Norwegian oil spill response companies that toured the United States to build networks to enter the US market. The oil vacuum cleaner was also presented at the Clean Gulf Conference – the largest exhibition for oil pollution cleanup products in North America.