Posted on 06/19/2010 8:11:50 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Actor's Machine Designed to Separate Oil and Water, BP: Tests Confirm Device Works.
After actor Kevin Costner spent weeks calling attention to a high-tech oil cleanup device his company spent years developing, BP tested the machine and overnight released a statement saying that not only does the device work, officials are "excited" about its potential.
"We were confident the technology would work but we needed to test it at the extremes. We've done that and are excited by the results," said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer. "We are very pleased with the results and today we have placed a significant order with OTS [Costner's Ocean Therapy Solutions] and will be working with them to rapidly manufacture and deploy 32 of their machines."
The machine is a centrifuge designed to separate spilled oil from water and, according to Costner, could be instrumental in cleaning up the massive oil slick expanding in the Gulf.
Costner has spent the past 15 years and more than $20 million of his own money to develop the oil separator, which during successful testing, left water 99 percent clean of crude.
"If 20 of my V20s [machines] would have been at the Exxon Valdez, 90 percent of that oil would have been cleaned up within the week," he said, referring to one of the models of the oil separators.
Costner told "Good Morning America" anchor Sam Champion Monday that he became inspired to work on the device after watching coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
That spill occurred off the coast of Alaska when the supertanker Exxon Valdez hit a reef in 1989. Approximately 11 million gallons of oil spilled into Prince William Sound, causing widespread harm to the local wildlife, environment and economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
The devices, which can be taken to the spill site via barges, come in different sizes. The largest can clean water at a rate of 200 gallons per minute, according to the firm.
Depending on the water-to-oil ratio, the devices are capable of extracting 2,000 barrels of oil per day from the gulf.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE INTERVIEW.
Well, good for Costner!!!
wasn’t equipment with similar capability aboard the dutch vessel that bummer refused — ostensibly because it did not take out ALL the oil but returned 1% of it to the ocean? doesn’t this machine have the same issue, but nobody’s uttering a peep about it now.
All I gotta say about that, is that if it takes an “actor” like Kevin Costner to show BP how to handle a spill... we’re worse off than I thought we were, with BP ... hoo-boy!
I heard the conservative Baldwin on the radio, I think Levin’s show, touting this device about 4 weeks ago. They had them down there and were waiting for the go-ahead. Pitiful that it took so long to give it a try.
So then who owns the oil? and is it still refinable ?
3 cheers for capitalism!
I hate to poopoo it, but 200 gallons a minute is practically nothing compared to the 660 quadrillion gallons of water in the gulf. My guess is that BP is purchasing them more for publicity than for the quantity of water they clean.
Hedy Lamarr invented an improved torpedo in WWII.
I'd say that whoever recovers the oil owns it. If it can still be refined, then they can sell it to pay for the salvage process. Probably even make a profit, to boot.
Yo Kevin ... how much is one of your machines again?
“So then who owns the oil? and is it still refinable ?”
Just take it all from the Gulf area and I’m sure BP will even help you refine it :)
Yes, that was meant as sarcasm.
don’t know who owns the oil? an interesting question. you may not be able to refine all of it, especially the light ends like kerosene and jet fuel but i suspect the borttoms could still be used for asphalt. i understand there is an asphalt shortage because refineries are more efficient at getting the lighter ends out of a barrel of crude.
Strike a blow for capitalism!
What I find kind of odd is why did Costner need BP’s permission or approval? I would think in an oil spill situation, any oil gathered would be finder’s keeper’s. Chemical dispersants should be examined for environmental hazards, but why would a device like this need to be examined? It can be tested in the water, if they keep coming back to shore with a full tank of oil, then mark it a success. And if BP notices Costner is getting more of their oil to the refinery than they are, they can buy the machines too.
How long until Bozo outlaws these devices?
RE: All I gotta say about that, is that if it takes an “actor” like Kevin Costner to show BP how to handle a spill... we’re worse off than I thought we were, with BP ... hoo-boy!
Well, let’s not look down on all actor as simply pretty boys on screen. A few of them actually DO have brains.
One I can think of is screen Siren, Hedy Lamar.
Here’s what Wikipedia tells us about her invention :
Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Hedy Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of musical instruments, including his music for Ballet Mecanique, originally written for Fernand Léger’s 1924 abstract film. This score involved multiple player pianos playing simultaneously.
Together, Antheil and Hedy Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and “Hedy Kiesler Markey”, Lamarr’s married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.
The idea was ahead of its time, and not feasible owing to the state of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba[6] after the patent had expired. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution.[1] In 1998, Ottawa wireless technology developer Wi-LAN, Inc. “acquired a 49 percent claim to the patent from Lamarr for an undisclosed amount of stock” (Eliza Schmidkunz, Inside GNSS);[7] Antheil had died in 1959.
Lamarr’s and Antheil’s frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones.[8] Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam’s 1920 patent Secrecy Communication System (1598673) seems to lay the communications groundwork for Kiesler and Antheil’s patent which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of torpedoes.
Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but she was told that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds. She once raised $7,000,000 at just one event.
For several years during the 1990s, the boxes of the current CORELDRAW software suites were graced by a large Corel-drawn image of Hedy Lamarr, in tribute to her pre-computer scientific discoveries.
I would say the escaped oil is high seas booty ready for the taking!
It took a millions years to make (give or take); it doesn’t biodegrade real easily. I would guess what you catch floating around may not include the real volatile short carbon chains, but you could still make heavy motor oil, axle oil and bearing grease without much trouble.
I’m guessing based on organic chem classes 30 years ago...
Free markets see demand and create products.
Uhmmmmmm... is this a publically traded company, and if so, who are the major shareholders, and what has recently happened to the price of its stock?
Wouldn’t you want to examine something if you were going to buy it? This is about BP buying them, not Joe Blow.
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