How a Cactus Could Be Key to Cleaning an Oil Catastrophe Stef DiPietrantonio - FOX 13 News
go to original April 20, 2012

What if there were another disaster looming in the Gulf of Mexico? Would we be better prepared to deal with the mess, given what we've learned over the last two years?

The answer to that question may lie inside a cactus.

Dr. Norma Alcantar is a biomedical engineer at the University of South Florida who is using the prickly pear cactus to work wonders. In Mexico, where she's from, that cactus is part of the daily diet.

But in her lab at USF, she's found a way to use it to possibly clean up a massive oil spill and more.

Alcantar never forgot the wise advice given to her by her grandmother, Balbina Zamora. Back in their village in Mexico, Zamora told her granddaughter they boiled the prickly pear cactus and used that water to purify drinking water collected from the river.

Alcantar was a teenager in chemistry class and thought she'd been the one schooling her grandmother on water purification.

"Sometimes we use chemicals to clean water," said Alcantar to her grandmother. "And then she said, oh yeah, I know all about that."

Alcantar has made that old-world advice part of her life's work.

First, the cactus pad is de-thorned and cleaned, then boiled. The leftover water has some amazing properties.

"You can mix it with the dirty water and let it sit for a little bit and you're gonna see how particles or debris from the water will actually deposit on the bottom," she explained.

Think of her solution as an accelerator: it helps the micro-organisms that are already in place eat up the mess, three times faster than any conventional, organic solvent.

"The gooey part of the cactus is what we call the mucilage," said Alcantar.

It's that gooey goodness inside that's edible for both humans and animals, so it's way safer, Dr. Alcantar said, than any solvent BP used to help clean up oil in the Gulf.

"Oil has formed sediments on the bottom of the ocean," said Alcantar. "Which, that's a phenomena that's very puzzling because oil is lighter than water, so it should always float to the surface."

Her cactus water is already being used successfully in Mexico to remove arsenic from ground water. She called her grandmother to let her know that part of her research was a success.

"It works really well," Alcantar said to her grandmother. "And she said, um yeah, I told you it works!"

Her grandmother never lived to see Alcantar's experiments on oil. Zamora died in 2008, but would no doubt be proud.

"Maybe she was right," Alcantar said.

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!