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

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."

Comments

Re:A good start

[realityimpaired]

As a general rule, I'd say that cleaning up at least part of the spilled oil before breaking it up would always be better. I say that as an environmentalist, not as a scientist (my studies were in a different field), but I would think that leaving less released toxins in the environment would usually be the better choice. :)

They aren't talking about this replacing breaking down the oil, they're talking about it as a way to reduce the amount of oil that needs to be broken down, as well as the amount of chemicals that need to be released in order to break it down.

I'd also say that this invention is worth a hell of a lot more than $1m to the industry.

Kevin Costner?

[Grizzley9]

What ever came of those oil cleaners that Kevin Costner's company supposedly had. I saw articles and remember about BP buying a few and using them but nothing after that. Were they effective? Better than the article winner? Just a PR move for BP? It says BP wanted about 32 and even had some set sail in July 2010 but after that all I see is a Slashdot article discussing it http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/18/2035238/ieee-looks-at-kevin-costners-oil-cleanup-machines

The only thing I could find close to a follow up in the popular press was from this July reviewing how well it worked and some of the failures (clogging with "peanut butter type" oil and such) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/12/bp-kevin-costner-deepwater-horizon-spill

Re:

[taiwanjohn]

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.

US regulations prevent this from being used

[Anonymous Coward]

US regulations require that any water dumped back into Sea is almost completely clean (10 parts of oil per million)
EU regulation requires oil cleaners to output water that is cleaner than they took in and must be atleast 90 water.
As a result the EU emergency response fleet (that is on standby at all times and was easily capable of containing the horizon spil) was not allowed to assist.

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

Re:US regulations prevent this from being used

[necro81]

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.

Target ORR

[afidel]

Isn't the target ORR for the competition too low? I thought one of the biggest hurdles encountered during the cleanup was that the it was illegal for the ships to discharge partially treated water even if they had removed a significant percentage of the oil and so the only legal solution was to tanker the partially treated water and take it to a land based facility which could more thoroughly separate it. Personally I think the EPA (or whatever the responsible enforcement authority was) should have temporarily suspended the rules but that makes too much sense for the government.

Re:A good start

[MozeeToby]

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.

Re:

[DiabolicallyRandom]

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