- The system of booms employed by the Coast Guard is also passive, is only effective in calm water, and the skimming process used does a poor job of separating oil from water.
The design of the Euroskimmer was as dynamic as it was simple. It was a catamaran hull, covering six square meters of area, which gave it dependable buoyancy; no added wave motion sensors or controls had to be integrated. It had a hydraulic power pack and was operated manually by radio or a joystick. And it carried 100 meters (approximately 328 feet) of a discharge hose. But the true secret and success of the device was the “disc-adhesion” system that collected the floating oil like flypaper, the discs then spun like a wool on a spindle-whorl, thus separating oil from the seawater, and the collected materials were then discharged back through the hose to a base ship that stored the oil.
The Euroskimmer being lowered for a test run Norway, 1978. The Euroskimmer effectively removes oil from the surface of the ocean in all weather conditions and would be a huge advantage for the gulf Oil spill. However, it was abandoned in the 1990s.