Hundred-Ton Dome To Collect Oil Spill

eldavojohn writes "After failing to contain the Gulf oil spill any other way, a massive containment dome had the finishing touches put on yesterday. It amounts to a giant concrete-and-steel box made by Wild Well Control that is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water. They expect an 85 percent collection with this device. It's not a pretty situation as Google Earth illustrates."

Comments

what are the chemical dispersants?

[fantomas]

Can anybody tell me about the chemical dispersants? what happens to the 'dispersed' oil plus these chemicals? This is a naive question, please educate me but surely this means you now have oil+chemical in your water rather than just oil in your water - is the dilution level so low that it doesn't affect the sealife that is later caught to eat, does it combine with the oil to something that it relatively innocuous that breaks down in sunlight, or something that sinks to the sea bed etc?

Information welcomed, just curious about what happens to that oil if its not skimmed off the surface or burnt off, but chemically treated and left in the ocean and left there. Maybe it's just so dilute it doesn't matter, I don't know. Any knowledge on this, folks?

Re:what are the chemical dispersants?

[AndersOSU]

Those who think letting the oil sink is a bad idea are a distinct minority.

Sure, if there wasn't oil in the water we wouldn't want to dump dispersants in, but there is, so this is the lesser of two evils.

The sea floor is a veritable desert compared to the ocean surface. The food chain starts in the first 10' of water, where plankton have access to sunlight.

There are creatures that will be effected by oil on the sea floor like crabs and such, but it's still better than letting it run ashore.

Briefly, oil on the ocean floor or dispersed in the water column is bad. Oil on the ocean surface is worse. And oil on the ocean surface at the shoreline and in the estuaries is an ecological catastrophe.

Re:what are the chemical dispersants?

[vlm]

Can anybody tell me about the chemical dispersants? what happens to the 'dispersed' oil plus these chemicals?

See wikipedia "Bile" entry... Similar concept but in an ocean rather than the guts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile

To make a very long story very short, oil naturally biodegrades over time by water internal-chemistry organisms, not oil internal-chemistry organisms. At a rate directly proportional to the surface area of the drop. Giant "ball" of oil the size of a football stadium will take much longer than a nearly infinite cloud of little microscopic droplets.

If a life form existed on earth with oil based protoplasm rather than water, you wouldn't need the dispersant because that life form could live inside the volume of the oil as opposed to upon the surface...

Think about bio sources of oil in the ocean. if there were no way to degrade oil, the oceans would be full of cod liver oil and whale oil. Similar with natural seeps of crude.

Much like radioactivity, crude is mostly harmless when properly distributed at an extremely low level in a large volume... its concentrated stuff thats the problem.

Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then?

[bzipitidoo]

you realize that the liability of BP is capped by law at a ridiculously low amount?

I find it amusing that the industry thought they could get away with that one. That they thought such a law could withstand the will of hordes of enraged and ruined people. No, BP is going to pay far, far more than $75 million. If they could stop the leak right now, and gather up all the spilled oil before it does any more damage, they could live this one down. It may turn out not as bad as feared. Seems unlikely from what I've heard.

No one has forgotten the Exxon Valdez. If this is worse, and every indication is that it will be much, much worse, this will never be forgotten either. What's a big company's reputation worth? A lot more than a paltry $75 million. To this day, I still sometimes avoid Exxon gas stations. Corporations have learned that they absolutely cannot afford such epic mistakes, no matter what technical limitations in liability they've won with lobbying. There were safety measures they could have taken to avoid all this. Union Carbide didn't survive Bhopal. Piper Alpha is the biggest oil platform disaster ever, but Occidental survived. This one doesn't have as many deaths. But it may be bigger. If that oil leaks for another 3 months, BP's downfall may be the least of the consequences. The entire Mississippi delta, Florida's coast, west and east, and who knows where the loop current and gulf stream might ultimately transport the mess?

The industry has really shit its nest this time.