Here's some more info on Kevin Costner's company Ocean Therapy Solutions. Watch the short video.
This article says "BP signed a letter of intent to use the machines within hours of his first conversation with Costner on May 18 and completed the first test within days." and also "Energy giant BP PLC has ordered 32 of the centrifuges from Ocean Therapy Solutions, a company co-founded by the actor. Costner joined officials of the energy company for an inspection Friday of a barge that was to take three of the devices into the Gulf starting over the weekend."
I'm not sure why it took a month to deploy any of them, but I hope it works. It sounds like they'll be trying 3 of the V20 models. Achieving 99% purity sounds good to me.
Though remember, they can't just pump all the spilled oil through it, they have to pump all the contaminated gulf water into it, a much bigger number. But if they can get several near the site of the spill, perhaps they can get a lot of the oil out before it disperses too much.
3 comments:
They should stop using dispersants, allow the oil that is not captured to rise to the surface, and contain it in a large area using booms or other similar mechanical dividers. Once the oil gets to the surface, then use the centrifuges and surface vacuums to clean it up.
The use of dispersants, I fear, is mostly a PR tool to minimize the visual appearance of oil on the surface waters and the physical impact of untreated oil on beaches, wildlife etc... This is not to say that the pictures of oil soaked birds, and dead fish and turtles aren't sickening enough to look at already.
The clean-up is not rocket science, and we can see how well BP is doing this. Unfortunately, drilling oil wells 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico is rocket science, and we know how well they handled that.
TT
Your point that they must pump A LOT of the gulf through the centrifuges is an important one. Not thousands of barrels of oil, but the orders of magnitude larger amount of seawater that has the oil in it (10% oil, 1% oil, less?). Remember also that the spill is a mile deep, so they need to get these machines to wherever on the surface the oil makes it so they can do the separation.
TT is right about the dispersants, see my earlier comment on the stability of oil/water emulsions making this centrifugation even harder. 32 V20 centrifuges at 200 GPM each but you probably need to keep out junk like fish and plants and whatever other garbage floats on the surface.
I can see some sardines having a very bad day.
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