Grooved Disk Spinner Cleans Up: $1M For Winner of Oil Recovery Challenge 54
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."
Re: (Score:5, 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 [elastec.com] devoted to this technology. There are photo [elastec.com] and video [elastec.com] galleries linked from there.
Re:A good start (Score:4, 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.
Re:US regulations prevent this from being used (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say that, in the process of damning the government, you have glossed over a couple of points:
So, yes, overly tight regulations may have made perfect the enemy of good, but those were not the proximate cause of the disaster.
Re: (Score:4, Informative)