Recently magnetic soap has been discovered. It was proposed to be a potential eco friendly tool for oil spill cleanup by using magnetic field to remove the oil which bonded up with soap molecules. The potential advantage this method seems to have is that since oil along with soap would be collected, if we could separate this oil from soap particles, we could reuse this oil! So it seems that, all we have to do is to device an efficient method to separate soap molecules from oil molecules.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2091091/Worlds-magnetic-soap-revolutionise-pollution-clean-operations.html
I believe a good answer can be waited only if the composition of the soap is given. Separation of the oil-water emulsion from the soap surely be based on the differences between the properties of the two material. For example, if the soap is stable in vacuum,a vacuum distillation at low temperature might be a possible solution, but it is a question whether the magnetic soap is chemically stable or not at the temperature/pressure where the oil can be evaporated. In order to find the differences between the oil and the magnetic soap, the knowledge about the last would be important.
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