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Grooved Disk Spinner Cleans Up: $1M For Winner of Oil Recovery Challenge

Posted by timothy on from the suck-it-up-losers dept.

cylonlover writes "Last July, in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the X PRIZE Foundation launched the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. As with previous X PRIZE competitions, this one was intended to encourage private sector scientific research, by offering a cash prize to whichever team could best meet a given challenge. In this case, teams had to demonstrate a system of their own making, that could recover oil from a sea water surface at the highest Oil Recovery Rate (ORR) above 2,500 US gallons (9,463.5 liters) per minute, with an Oil Recovery Efficiency (ORE) of greater than 70 percent. Today, the winning teams were announced with the US$1 million first prize going to Team Elastec/American Marine for their unique grooved disc skimmer."

4 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Re: by taiwanjohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's an illustration in TFA (it's the blue thing, next to the boat). You could also follow the link in TFA to the manufacturer's website, where there's a page devoted to this technology. There are photo and video galleries linked from there.

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  2. Re:A good start by MozeeToby · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem with breaking it down is going to be that any efficient process to do so is going to de-oxygenate the water. In fact, most of the oil is would be naturally broken down by bacteria in relatively short order (leaving behind some of the heavier byproducts unfortunately) but the dead spot it creates can take a very long time to recover.

  3. Re:US regulations prevent this from being used by necro81 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem with the horizon was one of defective government not technology. No X prize is going to improve that

    I'd say that, in the process of damning the government, you have glossed over a couple of points:

    1. * BP and Halliburton, between their greed, speed, hubris, laziness, and incompetence, drilled a dangerous and defective well
    2. * The US oil industry's ability to properly assess risk and prepare for and react to disaster is practically zero. [and yet were the US to, say, mandate a ready fleet of cleanup vessels, as the EU does, the same ones carping about the government response would also carp on about overbearing government regulation]
    3. * Despite the world being thrown at it from both government and industry, the Macondo well spewed for months
    4. * Even if the EU cleanup teams were allowed to assist, there was still 5 million barrels of crude released, which dispersed over tens of thousands of square kilometers.

    So, yes, overly tight regulations may have made perfect the enemy of good, but those were not the proximate cause of the disaster.

  4. Re: by DiabolicallyRandom · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wrong - while the linked website does contain pictures, the gallery(s) linked are for their prior existing technology, not this new DISC skimmer (you linked to the drum skimmers of old) The new stuff can be found here: http://www.elastec.com/xprize/index.php