Kontakt/Impressum  
 
 
Deepwater Horizon oil spill: suck up the plume by vacuum cleaner ships
 

19-05-2010 20:28 MEST

The Deepwater-Horizon-Drilling has come out very bad. The Blow-out may affect fishes deadly on which we live. This is not the hour of marketing sales und lawyers, this is the hour of engineering and organisation of fire fighter action.

If a water pipe breaks on the second floor, the first thing to do is to care for the break to get plugged. The second thing for the second team is, however, to suck up as much water on second floor as possible to minimize the damage.

I do not think it is useful to throw more dispersant into the oily seawater mixture. Dispersant helps to dilute small oil spills, but these are too big. It is probably better to keep up the deadly border between sea water and oil plume, because the fishes will probably realize that and thus can stay away from it.

Also, the oil is valuable for humans.

It should be collected as much as possible as long as it is still a big plume.

This could be done by ships that have a long hose through which they can pump up the oil/seawater-mixture into a container. The mixture in the container they can bring to the shore where it is stored until it can get refined.

The hose must be able to resist deep water pressure, eventually have metal spirals inside or have segments of metal pipes. On the front opening it needs weights so that it can go down to 1 or 2 miles. It needs fittings for wires or ropes so that it can be moved by byboats.

The hose should be laid out hanging on buoys and then filled with sea water (use pump on the ship). Then attach weights from the ship to the opening of the hose, heaviest weights at the opening. Hose should now go down while wires are attached from hose to byboats.

Because it must go very deep - to wait for the oil to come on surface is probably not good because it gets too mixed up with water by turbulences - it is probably better to keep the hose in the water and wait for the next ship with an empty container instead of taking the hose out.

The ship should bring the oil/seawater-mixture to the shore, where it should be stored until it can get refined.

Costs money, is work, needs coordination, would save some of the oil.

Sketch:

Download this in Word2003-Format

 
 
  © designschulz 2010