News oil and water seperator [Archive]

R Clark

06-16-2010, 07:39 AM

Yesterday morning on cnn I heard them talking about this. Kevin Costner helped develop and it is suposed to separate 99.9% of the oil from water at 200 hundred gallons per minute. Has anyone else heard this? Or is this just bullshit. Seems too good to be true

ChiefGator

06-16-2010, 07:43 AM

200 Gallons a minute may sound like alot when you are looking at your 20 Gallon aquarium, but when you compute how many gallons in the Gulf.. that is a different matter.

R Clark

06-16-2010, 07:52 AM

Yes, but I am sure theres more than one,and I would think it would be better than nothing.

cdcox

06-16-2010, 07:57 AM

The claim in and of itself isn't very extraordinary. There has been commercially availalbe technology capable of meeting such a specification since the 1980s. You have to recognize the difference between an advertising claim such as this (which was probably based on laboratory testing under ideal conditions) and what the unit can do in the field. There is also the matter of cost. You may be able to do something from a technological point of view, without being able to afford it. And 200 gpm is a drop in the ocean, compared to the scale of the problem.

Be biggest factor affecting the performance of an oil water separator is the nature of the oil and the extent of emulsification with the water. As the oil weathers, it tends to become more and more tarry. It is likely to gum up the equipment until its performance decreases, requiring the unit to be taken off line and cleaned.

Even if the unit worked economically and perfectly under field conditions as claimed, this would hardly be a panacea for the problem. You have to get the polluted water in to the unit. The oil is dispersed over hundreds of square miles. Some of the oil is on the surface, some is below the surface, and now some is settling in the marine sediments. Even the oil on the surface is difficult to corral in order to burn it off. Pumping it into the treatment unit is going to be that much more difficult.

You would have never heard about this technology had it not been for Kevin Costner backing it.

boogblaster

06-16-2010, 07:59 AM

any kind of seperator would be better than their current method .. hello clarkie ...

Radar Chief

06-16-2010, 08:00 AM

Yes, it's true.

BP oil spill: Kevin Costner's oil-water separation machines help with clean-upThe devices, developed with a team including his scientist brother, leave water 99% free of crude

As Robin Hood, Kevin Costner stole from the rich to give to the poor. As an unnamed, be-gilled seafarer in Waterworld, he fought with outlaw "smokers" for a greater cause.

The actor's latest role, as saviour of the Gulf of Mexico, goes some way towards combining the two, after his oil-water separation machines, in which he has personally invested $20m (£13.5m), were contracted by BP to help in the Gulf clear-up effort.

The 32 centrifuge machines, which a Costner-funded team of scientists have spent the past 15 years developing, are to be deployed to help tackle the spill, now believed to be gushing 40,000 barrels a day into the Gulf.

The devices, manufactured by Ocean Therapy Solutions, are carried to the spill area by barges before separating the oil and water. The largest of the machines, the V20, can clean water at a rate of 200 gallons a minute, according to the company's website.

Once separation has occurred, the oil is stored in tanks. The water is then more than 99% clean of crude.

"This is the key," Costner told CNN on Tuesday. "It's certainly a way to fight oil spills in the 21st century."

The actor has been developing the machinery since the early 1990s with the help of a team including his brother, a scientist.

"It may seem an unlikely scenario that I'm the one delivering this technology at this moment in time, but from where I'm sitting, it is equally inconceivable that these machines are not already in place," he said.

The actor gave testimony to the house of representatives science and technology committee last week, when he urged members to force oil rigs to have clean-up equipment on site.

"We've legislated life preservers. We legislated fire extinguishers," Costner said.

"We legislated lifeboats and first aid kits. It seems logical that as long as the oil industry profits from the sea, they have the legal obligation to protect it, except when they find themselves fighting for life and limb."

BP spokesman Bill Salvin confirmed the company has contracted with Costner and Ocean Therapy Solutions to use the machines.

"We recognised they had potential and put them through testing, and that testing was done in shallow water and in very deep water and we were very pleased by the results," Salvin said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/16/kevin-costner-oil-spill-machines

Icon

06-16-2010, 08:00 AM

Separating oil from water is not that hard to do. Most oil wells produce oil and water together which gets pumped into an oil-water separator. Oil floats to the top and runs into oil tanks. Water sinks to the bottom and gets discharge to the water tank. The question is to what level of purity is acceptable for regulators to allow discharge back into the ocean or into a disposal well. The fluid volume rate is also an issue as the longer residence time in a typical oil-water separator creates better separation. Larger oil-water separators create more residence time which facilitates higher quality separation. I'm curious about Costner's patented technology though.

cdcox

06-16-2010, 08:02 AM

any kind of seperator would be better than their current method .. hello clarkie ...

Imagine yourself standing in an inch of sewage in your bathroom and having nothing to clean it up with. Would your situation be improved in the least if someone handed you a Q-tip?

cdcox

06-16-2010, 08:21 AM

I just looked at their website. It's basically a centrifuge that has been engineered for oil separation. The technology is sound and this isn't a bad approach. I did a rough calculation and if they had a couple hundred of these, BP could probably come close to meeting their July oil recovery goal of 80,000 barrels per day, as long as they were able to find areas that were relatively contaminated at all times. That is the problem though is that oil is becoming more and more dispersed and harder to get to so that a unit like this can be effective. It can help, but is still not a panacea.

Bill Lundberg

06-16-2010, 08:21 AM

KCFANinNC

06-16-2010, 11:21 AM

It was featured in Waterworld.

The government started to listen, but with this guy nothing is a short story.

Mr. Laz

06-16-2010, 11:34 AM

If the U.S. has a law that made it mandatory that any company drilling in the deep sea has to drill the relief well at the same time this wouldn't be a problem.

i believe Canada has the requirement already.

the relief well can be no more than 1 week behind the main well so that at most you get a 6 day long leak.

but of course ...

"that will just cost the oil companies more money and they will pass it on to the consumer so we shouldn't do it"/repubtard

cdcox

06-16-2010, 12:10 PM

If the U.S. has a law that made it mandatory that any company drilling in the deep sea has to drill the relief well at the same time this wouldn't be a problem.

i believe Canada has the requirement already.

the relief well can be no more than 1 week behind the main well so that at most you get a 6 day long leak.

but of course ...

"that will just cost the oil companies more money and they will pass it on to the consumer so we shouldn't do it"/repubtard

Passing the cost to consumers is fine. It is part of the true cost of tapping that resource. Oil is cheap because we defer most of the true costs associated with its use. For example, what if 50% of the cost of the US military (needed to assure access to middle-eastern supplies) was paid for by oil taxes? All of the sudden, companies would have a lot more incentive to develop cheaper energy alternatives. Instead much of "cheap energy" is subsidized by tax payers, health insurance premiums, and economic collateral damage.

Jilly

06-16-2010, 12:34 PM

R8RFAN

06-17-2010, 06:11 AM

There are 343,423,668,428,484,681,262 gallons of water in the oceans.
That's 343 quintillion gallons, or put another way, 343 billion BILLION gallons.

That 200 gallon per minute pump will take a while

Gary

06-17-2010, 07:05 AM

There are 343,423,668,428,484,681,262 gallons of water in the oceans.
That's 343 quintillion gallons, or put another way, 343 billion BILLION gallons.

That 200 gallon per minute pump will take a while

I thought I heard that BP ordered 16 of his machines. That cuts down the time to clean the ocean considerably...to approx 74 trillion years.

Lzen

06-17-2010, 07:13 AM

R8RFAN

06-17-2010, 07:42 AM

I thought I heard that BP ordered 16 of his machines. That cuts down the time to clean the ocean considerably...to approx 74 trillion years.

Hell, I never thought of it like that.... Hell lets do it ROFL