BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April 2010. Among the many materials and devices used to protect the sensitive Gulf Coast from history’s largest oil spill are adsorbent ‘booms’ primarily made from polypropylene nonwovens. These booms basically consist of a nonwoven tube filled with a number of different polypropylene (PP) materials, primarily made from a process known as melt blowing. The booms are laid down in the water and their properties attract and adsorb the oil from the water better than any other known similar product. From a technical perspective, PP melt blown nonwovens are proving to be particularly effective because their specific gravity is lighter than water, so the booms are able to float on the water's surface. In addition, polypropylene has an affinity for oil that allows it to adsorb the oil in great quantities. Melt blown PP is used in the oil adsorbent because the melt blown fiber diameter is extremely fine and cumulatively presents a large surface to attract and hold onto the oil. The extremely fine meltbown fibers can adsorb much more oil than most other products - up to 25 times its weight, compared to clay oil absorbent granules, which only absorb up to three times their weight - due to greater surface area of meltblown per a given unit. They work by collecting the oil on the surface of the fibers. Its hydrophobic properties and lighter density than water make it buoyant in water and also ideal for situations where you have oil on water. As per Wikipedia, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill) was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed for three months in 2010. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. The spill stemmed from a sea-floor oil gusher that resulted from the April 20, 2010, explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. On July 15, 2010, the leak was stopped by capping the gushing wellhead, after it had released about 4.9 million barrels (780,000 m3) of crude oil. An estimated 53,000 bpd escaped from the well just before it was capped.