An engineer at the University of Utah named Andy Hong has developed an inexpensive way to remove the oily sheen from water by repeatedly pressurizing and depressurizing ozone gas to create microscopic bubbles. The microscopic bubbles have a much greater surface area and are able to chemically react with the oil. The pollutants build up on the bubbles produced and are water soluble.

Ozone is also a very strong oxidant. The oil is dispersed into acids and chemicals known as Aldehydes and ketones. Those two substances then help the oil to clump together were it could be more easily filtered by traditional sand filtering.

Hong said, "We are not trying to treat the entire hydrocarbon [oil] content in the water – to turn it into carbon dioxide and water – but we are converting it into a form that can be retained by sand filtration, which is a conventional and economical process."

Hong's process has several patents pending and he says that the process can be used to treat a variety of pollutants in water and will scale well. The process can be used to treat "produced water" from oil and gas drilling. The process could also treat water from the mining of tar or oil shale among several other uses.

Hong proved his process in experiments using a tabletop version of this chemical reactor and a quart of oily water made by mixing deionized water with crude oil. Ozone was produced by passing air through a high-voltage field. The produced ozone was then pressurized to about 150 pounds per square inch.

The oily water was cleaned most effectively when pressurized and depressurized ten times and then filtered through sand. The water was then put through the pressurization cycle 20 more times. Hong says the resulting treated water was almost as clear as drinking water and the process removed 99% of the turbidity of the "produced water."