In recent years, frequent oil spills at sea and nuclear incidents have caused serious pollution on the human environment; furthermore, these pollutants are difficult to remove in a short time. An offshore drilling platform of British Petroleum (BP) in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in 2010, causing 11 deaths of the workers, resulting in a large number of oil spilt to the sea; According to media reports at the time, the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico last for a few months, resulting in the death of wild animals, beach being contaminated, and accompanied by secondary effects of the oil spill. The viscosity of the oil determines once it leaking out from tankers and offshore drilling rig, the removal from marine plants and animals is very difficult. Therefore, to find a way to quickly remove and degrade oil leakage is essential for the protection of the marine environment, and marine oil pollution control has become one of the world’s common concern.

 

For taking full advantage of solar energy, scientists coupled the titanium dioxide particles to the hollow glass microspheres which the density is much smaller than that of water by coupling agent of Silane, to form the titanium dioxide photocatalyst which can float on the surface water; also, they studied its photocatalytic decomposition of organic pollutants film on the water and obtained satisfactory results. Although, there has no yet the reports for the study of the tungsten trioxide in the oil pollution control, but I believe  that if will be in the future, because the tungsten trioxide is a photocatalyst which has the better photocatalytic effect of titanium dioxide; and moreover, ultrafine tungsten trioxide powder has a very broad application in catalysis prospects.

 

Tungsten trioxide (WO₃), yellow tungsten oxide powder, not only has the properties of photochromic, gas sensing, but also has good catalytic function, and being an important radiation shielding material at the same time. Band gap of tungsten trioxide is 2.4eV ~ 2.8eV, which means that it can take full advantage of sunlight; in addition, WO₃ itself has no toxicity, as a photocatalyst, if the technical support was supported, it will degrade the ocean oil pollution and make an important contribution to the marine environmental government, if with appropriate.