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Seaswarm, an autonomous, solar-powered skimmer, may be the answer to less expensive and more efficient methods for cleaning up future oil spills. The robot prototype promises to absorb 20 times its weight in oil. Created by researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab, Seaswarm employs a conveyor belt of absorbent, nanowire mesh. The specially deigned mesh can suck up oil on the water’s surface and then process and dispose of the oil it’s collected. The Seaswarm can continue to absorb more of the spill while the robot autonomously navigates and cleans the ocean for weeks on end. Researchers claim that 5,000...

Machines that separate oil from water—even allowing the oil to be refined later—can be on-site in the Gulf of Mexico within days, Jean-Michel Cousteau, president and founder of the Ocean Futures Society, told CBNC Thursday. Cousteau, who is backing the use of the machines, or units, is on the advisory board of Ecosphere Technologies, which makes them. Cousteau, the son of legendary sea explorer and ecologist, Jacques Cousteau, said there are 24 to 26 units that are ready to go and in the region. The units are mobile water treatment plants, which use a nonchemical oxidation process, Michael Vinick, chairman...

(CNSNews.com) - Actor Kevin Costner told a press conference on Capitol Hill that if a machine produced by a company in which he is a partner had been used earlier to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, “we would be keeping that [the oil] offshore.” The machine, which Costner invested more than $20 million to develop, can separate oil from water to clean up oil spills.   Costner said that BP, the oil company whose damaged well is the source of the spill, had recently placed an order for deploying 32 of the machines. “We’re coming to this...

The U.S. Coast Guard has complained that there is not enough plastic tubing in the United States to construct the booms needed to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. And neither BP, the Coast Guard, nor any other part of the U.S. government seems to understand how to effectively clean up the fouled Gulf. A technology that could effectively and actively remove oil from the surface of the ocean in all weather conditions would be a huge advance for the efforts going on in the Gulf right now. In fact, such a technology was designed and tested in the...