MIT Unveils Oil-Skimming Robot Swarm Prototype

Posted by timothy on Saturday August 28, 2010 @07:06AM from the so-burning-harmless-eh dept.

destinyland writes "Today MIT reveals a swarm of autonomous floating robots that can digest an oil spill. The 16-foot robots drag a nanowire mesh that acts like a conveyor belt to soak up surface oil 'like paper towels soak up water,' absorbing 20 times its weight and then harmlessly 'digesting' the oil by burning it off. Powered by 21.5 square feet of solar panels, the 'Seaswarm' robots run on the power of a lightbulb, and with just 100 watts 'could potentially clean continuously for weeks' without human intervention, MIT announced. The swarm uses GPS data and communicates wirelessly to move as a coordinated group to 'corral, absorb and process' oil spills, and MIT researchers estimate that a fleet of 5,000 could clean up a gulf-sized spill within one month."

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Re:Yeah! by tomhudson · 2010-08-28 07:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

FTFA: http://web.mit.edu/press/2010/seaswarm.html

By heating up the material, the oil can be removed and burnt locally and the nanofabric can be reused.

Notice the URL - it's MIT saying this, not someone mis-quoting them.
Also, good luck with that during hurricane season.
Additionally, bad math alert. To clean up 5 million barrels in 30 days with 5,000 units, each unit would have to pick up 33 barrels a day. 16'x7'= 112 square feet. A barrel is 42 gallons, and there are 7.5 gallons in a cubic foot. So, 33 barrels is 1,385 gallons, or 184.5 cubic feet. Your skimmer will be towing a chunk of oil-soaked nanofibres half a yard thick - you're not going to be making much headway dragging that with only 100 watts (1/8 horsepower).
It might start out okay, but as you collect oil, it will get worse, so take that 1 month and make it a year.