oil spill - the solution?

[Pistonsbeneath]

http://theknightshift.blogspot.com/2010 ... an-up.html

Before anything else in this post, I'm gonna get this off my chest: I've never understood why Waterworld has such a bad rap. I saw this movie during its first week in theaters in 1995 and thought it was pretty good. Not overwhelmingly "excellent", and the science behind it is atrocious (namely that there isn't enough water in the polar caps to cover the Earth's surface if they melted) but Waterworld was still a great action flick that has only gotten better with age.

Anyhoo, that photo is Kevin Costner at the till of his vessel in Waterworld... and not Kevin Costner at the controls of his very own real life invention: the "Ocean Therapy" water cleansing system. Who'da thunk that all this time he was making Waterworld, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Open Range, that Costner was also working behind the scenes with millions of dollars of his own money to develop the system?

Well, it now looks like Kevin Costner's innovation is going to come to the rescue of the Deepwater Challenger oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. New York Daily News has the story...

Could there be a happy Hollywood ending to the Gulf oil spill?

Enter "Waterworld" star Kevin Costner, who has spent years and millions of dollars perfecting a device that cleans oil from seawater.

British Petroleum - desperate for ideas - gave the okay to test six of Costner's gizmos this week, said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles.

Costner's high-speed centrifuge machine has a Los Angeles-perfect name: "Ocean Therapy."

Placed on a barge, it sucks in large quantities of polluted water, separates out the oil and spits back 97% clean water.

"It's like a big vacuum cleaner," said Costner's business partner, Louisiana trial lawyer John Houghtaling.

"The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water," he said.

The "Field of Dreams" star first got a team together to create the device in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

His scientist brother, Dan Costner, helped develop the device, and together, the brothers formed Costner Industries Nevada Corp. to pursue various energy projects, including a non-chemical battery that could last 15 years.

The 55-year-old actor eventually sank $26 million into the Ocean Therapy oil separator project. He obtained a license for the device from the Department of Energy in 1993 and has been trying for years to promote it.

In 2007, he told London's Daily Mail that he had blown millions on "technologies I thought would help the world" and had nothing to show for it.

"I've lost $40 million-plus," he said. "But I knew that if I was right, it would change things in an incredibly positive way."

Last week, he was in Louisiana seeking redemption, demonstrating his Ocean Therapy contraption.

"I'm just really happy that the light of day has come to this," Costner said.

Though reporters largely greeted his ideas with snickers, BP apparently wasn't laughing.

At least 210,000 gallons of oil per day is gushing into the sea from the ocean floor where the BP rig exploded April 20. The oil company has tried several novel solutions, but none has worked so far to plug the leak.

The company is skimming the oil, spraying it with dispersant chemicals underwater and trying to burn it on the surface.

Nineteen percent of the Gulf's lucrative fisheries are closed, billions of beach tourist dollars are at stake and dozens of seagoing species are threatened.

Costner has 300 of his Ocean Therapy machines in various sizes. The largest, at 21/2 tons, is able to clean water at a rate of 200 gallons a minute - faster than the well is leaking, Houghtaling noted.

[lloydnoise]

well big up Costner

[j_one]

Fuck aren't the using this already then? They've already left it to leak for fucking ages.

[kay]

Why don't they cut down a tree with the diameter of the pipe hole and plug the dam thing. The solution seems so simple and quick. I know it would take time to cut a tree down and deliver it to the ship. But they do it all the time in the logging community, they use helicopters. Just a suggestion.

I'll try and the find the forum where i saw this (and other 'suggestions') and shows the typical American bydlo at work

Plugging up a massive fucked up hole in the ground deep underwater probably isn't as easy as it might seem. First of all, you've gotta guide the thing down. Secondly, it's not an evenly-sized feature so any gaps you leave will still leak. And the pressure from the oil reservoir itself will eventually cause ruptures around the plug, starting from where the gaps are.

It's going to have to be a multi-pronged approach to solving the problem. A combination of limitation (capping), remediation (microbes) and cleaning. I think the Costner solution (if it works as well as claimed) may help, but the problem is that this is an ocean, so a constant supply of clean water is always coming into mingle with contaminated water. It's going to take years to clean-up. But the longer the fail to stop the leak, the longer it's going to take to clean.

[Ayatollah]

Fuck aren't the using this already then? They've already left it to leak for fucking ages.

It's probably not as effective as the article makes it seem. Like Kay said, there is no simple solution for this and you'll need to a combination of stuff. Kudos to Costner for trying to address the problem though (if it's not just a publicity stunt)

[frank grimes jr.]

Haven't had a chance to read this yet, but:

http://info.publicintelligence.net/BPGo ... seplan.pdf

[brent]

something about a dead whale in new york. will be sad if ocean animals start washing ashore and floating about dead.

[frank grimes jr.]

My secret plan to aid the Japanese has commenced!
FUCK WHALES

[jolly wailer]

lots and lots of kitty litter

[badger]

possibly a repost but alpacas save the day once more

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... bed-video/

[sanjion]

James Cameron and his team of experts will save the day, and the earth.. and mop up a Nobel Prize in the process.

This will be swiftly followed by him running for congress...

Just watched the live inquiry on CNN. Hayward refusing to answer questions.. and the sheer number of alleged safety violations was ludicrous. But why we never hear of these shortcuts/violations UNTIL something of such magnitude actually happens? i.e till it's too late?

Oh well. SuperJames is with us, thank the lord.

[sanjion]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... fails.html

Apologies.. hadn't realised BP had already turned him down.. yet he was still on Larry King Live with his experts trying to curry favour with the American public.. hmm. Definite congress material.

[danoldboy]

This is going to take a long long time to clear. if ever.

[frank grimes jr.]

Was talking about this with my brother in-law yesterday, who has a master's degree in enviro-science. He feels this will be a 100 year disaster.

[NilsFG]

Warning, old picture


It's a serious problem though, and I don't think the water will be clean for years to come...

[DZA]

Just chuck a shit load of seagulls into it theyll clean it up nicely

[scoz]

Why don't they cut down a tree with the diameter of the pipe hole and plug the dam thing. The solution seems so simple and quick. I know it would take time to cut a tree down and deliver it to the ship. But they do it all the time in the logging community, they use helicopters. Just a suggestion.

I'll try and the find the forum where i saw this (and other 'suggestions') and shows the typical American bydlo at work

Plugging up a massive fucked up hole in the ground deep underwater probably isn't as easy as it might seem. First of all, you've gotta guide the thing down. Secondly, it's not an evenly-sized feature so any gaps you leave will still leak. And the pressure from the oil reservoir itself will eventually cause ruptures around the plug, starting from where the gaps are.

It's going to have to be a multi-pronged approach to solving the problem. A combination of limitation (capping), remediation (microbes) and cleaning. I think the Costner solution (if it works as well as claimed) may help, but the problem is that this is an ocean, so a constant supply of clean water is always coming into mingle with contaminated water. It's going to take years to clean-up. But the longer the fail to stop the leak, the longer it's going to take to clean.

there's also the problem wood is in general bouyant. so trying to plug a hole with a bouyant substance that would be pressured from underneath won't work

the only solution to stopping the flow will be the relief wells. unfortunately they take time. also the implication BP was being cheap by not allowing transocean to fix the BOP is incorrect. If productive time is interrupted as a result of a problem with the rigs equipment, it costs the oil company nothing. so say they were drilling at the time they found it out, only once the drill bit was back on bottom would BP start paying. frankly I read it as the transocean people said it would be OK to carry on with the one control pod, almost certainly against all proceedures.

[test_recordings]

I think the US government is dragging it out to keep GDP up by the amount of money being spent; BP's spending money that goes towards taxes and is also going to pay out a lot more than it would have done normally in tax. It's an inherent problem with economic models as they only measure money going round, not how... the means justifies the end.
Interestingly, the French government commisioned an inquiry in to better ways of measuring success and reccomended citizen's happiness over economic output. Far better way of doing it really, money itself doesn't make people happy or even what they get with it.

Why doesn't the state either cooperate with BP in dealing with this or taking control themselves? They probably wouldn't take control themselves as that therefore leaves them responsible which would be bad if they screwed it but the other option might help

[section5]

Don't mind trees. Put James Corden down the hole.

[EBR]

Was talking about this with my brother in-law yesterday, who has a master's degree in enviro-science. He feels this will be a 100 year disaster.

The spill Mexican spill dumped over 3 million barrels of crude in 1979. Today the fishing and shrimping is back. Thier Oysters still taste like oil.

The Deep Water Horizon blow out has dumped over 8 million barrels. Thats over 140 million gallons of crude oil. The fear is layers and layers of it will settle and kill all oysters and crabs industry for 100 years. I fear fishing and shrimping is gone for 10 yrs or more. If heavy crude hits the Florida Keys... Yeh, ahhhh its pretty bad. Many millions of birds migrate north and south through the gulf of mexico and through the Mississippi river delta/ ground zero for what might end up flowing for years ? ? ? if they can't plug it. The problem is that its @ 5,000 feet. Pressure @ that depth is 2,000 atmosphere.

Lets put it this way its a worse nightmare kinda scenerio for millions of people. I can't believe it eithere... peeps were just getting back from Katrina. Muther fockin fuk fuk it. Praying that sh*t gets stopped soon. 'pray it doesnt hit the Keys and Miami.