Kevin Costner's Oil Clean Up Machine Appears To Work As Advertised.

[mrjminer]

They went over why it hasn't been used before. If you have a problem with the oil companies not using it send a letter to one of your politicians because they're the ones who made the regulations this thing doesn't pass.

That's why I said our government blows

 

[CADsortaGUY]

I think this came out a week or so ago. It had some trouble with the oil at first because it was thick do to an additive they put in it to make it easier to skim, but they made some tweaks and it's working flawlessly from what I've read. Kevin Costner deserves all of our respect for putting his mind, money and fame where his mouth is.

this

 

[FuzzyBee]

You mean you don't know what it has to do with the story?

The back story to this is the sum of actions, inactions, natural conditions and both misguided and malevolent political decisions that have brought us to the manmade catastrophies we now face. And it's part of what motivated Costner to look for solutions. Don't take my word for it. Read the story at bfdd's link. A couple of quick quotes from a much deeper article with video links:

Huh. Nothing there mentions Bobby Jindal. Haley Barbour, either. Interesting. Did either of them *not* want Costner's device off their coasts? Did their state governments keep it from coming into play? Why is it again that it took so long to get there?

Nothing there mentions the overall safety of offshore drilling. Do you honestly think that offshore drilling can't be done safely at all? Sheesh.

 

[chucky2]

That was the "top kill," one of the first things they tried that was blocked by hydrate crystals. The current cap is a smaller version of the same thing with vents they can open and close to reduce the formation of the hydrates.

I guess what I'm envisioning is a funnel for each of these devices attached to a float, which is sunk down and tethered to the ocean floor - so it won't move around much. These funnels would have the large diameter end down, and the pipe to the surface on top. Place the funnels close and above the blowout preventer.

As the oil blows out of the blowout preventer, hopefully some of it will either be blown towards the funnels, or be pulled in by them, then these things can process the oil.

Probably impossible or impracticle, I wonder if they've considered something like that though.

Chuck

 

[mrjminer]

I guess what I'm envisioning is a funnel for each of these devices attached to a float, which is sunk down and tethered to the ocean floor - so it won't move around much. These funnels would have the large diameter end down, and the pipe to the surface on top. Place the funnels close and above the blowout preventer.

As the oil blows out of the blowout preventer, hopefully some of it will either be blown towards the funnels, or be pulled in by them, then these things can process the oil.

Probably impossible or impracticle, I wonder if they've considered something like that though.

Chuck

I think they still have their "suggestions" area open for their PR machine. However, I remember reading somewhere that they haven't used any of the suggestions, even though many of them were extremely practical, possible, cheap, or had materials free to use from donations already.

 

[taltamir]

I am told this post should have gone here, in the P&N version of this thread...
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=30044969&postcount=18

So, hi everyone... hope you welcome me nicely to the P&N section.

 

[Babbles]

I understand that perhaps this equipment is able to clean only a fraction of the spill, I am so glad that BP gave the green light to try it. I also gotta parrot the sentiment in that I'm glad Costner put his money where his mouth is and apparently has a successful and useful product.

 

[Harvey]

Huh. Nothing there mentions Bobby Jindal. Haley Barbour, either. Interesting. Did either of them *not* want Costner's device off their coasts? Did their state governments keep it from coming into play? Why is it again that it took so long to get there?

This.

Jindal Challenges Drilling Moratorium

“Drill, baby, Drill,” continues to be the Republican mantra: Perhaps seeking to upstage Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who said on Sunday that the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling was “worse” than the oil-spill itself, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit seeking an injunction to lift the moratorium. U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman has said he’ll decide on whether or not to grant the injunction by noontime Wednesday.

Posted at 2:27 PM, Jun 21, 2010

Nothing there mentions the overall safety of offshore drilling. Do you honestly think that offshore drilling can't be done safely at all? Sheesh.

I hope you understand that a "moritorium" on offshore drilling does not mean a total, permanent cessation. In this case, it's nominally a six month time out to evaluate the safety issues involved.

Considering the reality of the last two months, do you honestly think there are no reasons to be concerned about the safety minor issues like human life, health and safety, or the security of our food supply or protection of our oceans and wetlands?

Jindal and Barbour need to talk to some real engineers about how safe continued drilling is, how safe it can be and how that can be accomplished. Unless they can pull a Kevin Costner and produce ready to go, guaranteed answers, they're willing to risk the lives, health, and FUTURE jobs and very sustainable existence of the entire Gulf coast to encourage some jobs doing work that, at present, is the cause of their very destruction.

That's not exactly good engineering. Stopping drilling for six months to find some answers is more than reasonable.

I picked them as immediate examples, but they're just part of the "business first at any cost" mentality that brought us the current oil spill hell. I could as easily have named others.

Costner and others like him, are the direct counterpoint to that. What motivates them, and the corporate and political obsticals they continue to face are what makes them relevant to this thread.

 

[FuzzyBee]

I hope you understand that no matter what you may or may not think, a 6-month moratorium will not absolutely determine the safety or lack thereof of offshore drilling. Of course, I guess your idea is that the safe history of offshore drilling is discounted because of one incident (as major as it may be). Do you also call for all airplanes to be grounded for six months if one crashes? You are concerned about human life, right? Or was your cute little rolling eyes indicating that you aren't?

*Of course* you picked them as immediate examples. I'm sure that was totally random, right? I guess I could insert a cute little rolling eyes here, too, right? How do you know, BTW, that they haven't talked to, as you like to put it, "real engineers"? I'm guessing that "fact" may have come from an orifice, but I'm not going to state that as fact, because I don't know. *Apparently*, you do.

By the way, were you for any sort of moratorium on rebuilding the New Orleans levee system? Considering the tragic loss of life there, surely it would have made sense to not rebuild, right?

 

[taltamir]

Jindal and Barbour need to talk to some real engineers about how safe continued drilling is, how safe it can be and how that can be accomplished. Unless they can pull a Kevin Costner and produce ready to go, guaranteed answers, they're willing to risk the lives, health, and FUTURE jobs and very sustainable existence of the entire Gulf coast to encourage some jobs doing work that, at present, is the cause of their very destruction.

I had heard on the radio that the industries damaged by the gulf spill account for 2 billion a year. While the industry of refining in the affected states alone account for 60 billion. and much more beyond there.

I had heard on TV that there were problems with government inspectors not doing their jobs; taking bribes, etc. and the blown well had safety problems before it went, and that those problems weren't addressed in a timely manner.

So I don't see a need to do anything but make sure the current laws are enforced. AKA: Make sure inspectors are doing their job and that wells are operated safely.

 

[Harvey]

I had heard on the radio that the industries damaged by the gulf spill account for 2 billion a year. While the industry of refining in the affected states alone account for 60 billion. and much more beyond there.

I had heard on TV that there were problems with government inspectors not doing their jobs; taking bribes, etc. and the blown well had safety problems before it went, and that those problems weren't addressed in a timely manner.

So I don't see a need to do anything but make sure the current laws are enforced. AKA: Make sure inspectors are doing their job and that wells are operated safely.

You heard on the radio blah, blah, blah. You heard on TV blah, blah, blah. You don't KNOW jack shit about the physics and mechanics of the forces involved or the engineering skills and experience required to deal with them.

What's worse is, when it comes to dealing with spills and other mega disasters, neither do the oil companies. They said so, themselves in their testimony before Congress.

Sheesh! Their own alleged disaster preparedness reports are clones of each other. Every one of them is careful to note how many walruses would be impacted by a spill and what they would do to mitigate the damages cause by spills, and they were so sure they could handle even larger spills with technology that didn't quite work when it got down to needing it.

And BTW -- There are no walruses in the Gulf. If you don't believe me, you can call an expert on oil spills like the one whose namd and number appear in all of those disaster preparedness reports... Or at least, you could if he hadn't died five years ago.

 

[classy]

Waterworld lives! WTG, Kevin! :thumbsup:

LOL
Waterworld. Man he slapped that little girl that was an all time classic . This is good news.

Here it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1dh1t46t2I

 

[taltamir]

They said so, themselves in their testimony before Congress.

Which was on TV.

 

[NeoV]

Kevin Costner drinks his own pee

/thread

 

[StageLeft]

Kevin Costner drinks his own pee

/thread

And eats pee fruit.

 

[GroundedSailor]

Ships have had oily water separators for years - at least since the 1980's - which can bring down the discharge to 15 ppm. Outside special ocean areas ships are allowed to discharge oily engine bilges provided it is less than 15 ppm

15 ppm oil is small enough that it will not leave a sheen on the water, i.e. will not be readily visible, and is the international standard which applies to all countries including the US.

So to say that the regulations cannot be met is false.

What appears to be the issue is that Costener's machines are high volume units and cannot meet the standard at their operating capacity. Shipboard machines are low volume units and are very expensive.

In a spill of this magnitude it would make sense to use the machines even if the final output is not up to regulations. Far better to have the bulk of the oil removed than to have none removed because the machine cannot meet 15 or 30 ppm standards. BP is buying the machines after the spill, but before the spill it is feasible that oil co's would not spend money on technology that does not meet regulations. Happens all the time.

.

 

[PeshakJang]

You heard on the radio blah, blah, blah. You heard on TV blah, blah, blah. You don't KNOW jack shit about the physics and mechanics of the forces involved or the engineering skills and experience required to deal with them.

You heard on Huffington post blah blah blah. You heard on DailyKos blah blah blah.

You don't know jack shit either, Harvey. You are obviously oblivious to the economic impact of a 6-month moratorium, while I am quite certain that the governments of the states affected know quite a bit about it. They are the ones that are hurt the most by this spill, and if they are the ones seeking to block the moratorium, I think they are more than qualified to make that judgment. You? You don't know jack shit. Jack. Shit.

 

[Mark R]

I wonder if they could get a pipewith a pump, or two or three, down by the blowout preventer and route it to the machine somehow?

Maybe a large funnel(s) anchored to the ocean floor to channel the oil to the pipe(s). If it can process that much per day, could it not handle what's coming out of the blowout preventer?

Chuck

They're already doing that:
They've attached a large funnel to the top of the leaking blowout preventer - the stuff is flowing up through the funnel as fast as they can process (separate the gas from the oil) it. (15k barrels per day). The problem is the funnel only has a single port on it, so it can only connect to a single processing ship - which is maxed out.

They're making a new funnel, which will bolt on, and will have multiple ports for connecting to processing ships.

They've also attached several pipes to 'injection' ports on the blow-out preventer and are sucking up oil through those ports. They're getting about 10k barrels per day this way.

The big problem with trying to collect the oil from this leak, is that it is mixed with a huge amount of gas. (Something like 60% of what is coming out is gas). As the gas rises through the water, the pressure decreases and the gas gets cold. It gets freezing cold. In addition, when water is mixed with gas under pressure, it dissolves in the water. A gas water solution freezes very easily. The problem they have collecting this oil, is that if any water gets sucked up with the oil/gas, it will freeze up and block the pipe. Worse, the frozen gas-water ice is highly unstable and can explode if disturbed, releasing the gas - rather like how diet coke 'explodes' when you put mentos is - but with the disadvantage, that you've got thousands of gallons of the stuff, and the gas is highly flammable.

They initially built a big 'containment dome' with a pipe to carry the oil to the surface. They lowered the dome over the leaking BOP, and within about 1 hour, the pipe had frozen solid.

The current 'funnel' (it's proper name is LMRP cap) is an sophisticated device with multiple anti-freeze injectors, and a steam/hot water jacket for the pipe going to the surface.

 

[Tom]

They went over why it hasn't been used before. If you have a problem with the oil companies not using it send a letter to one of your politicians because they're the ones who made the regulations this thing doesn't pass.

So it passed government regulations now ? I doubt it. I would guess there aren't any government regulations stopping the use of this device, just regulations that say using this device alone isn't enough.

If it's true the government prevented the use of this device, where's the reporting about the lifting of that ban ?

 

[Mark R]

So it passed government regulations now ? I doubt it. I would guess there aren't any government regulations stopping the use of this device, just regulations that say using this device alone isn't enough.

If it's true the government prevented the use of this device, where's the reporting about the lifting of that ban ?

The problem is that the regulations prohibit dumping water overboard unless it meets regulations. It is possible to get a waiver, if you apply for one. There are also other ways to get around it.

There are a number of oil separation ships already down at the gulf, capable of separating up to 5000 barrels/day of oil. They get around the problem by having their suction funnels on the front of the ship, and by discharging the separated water in front of the funnels.

As I mentioned in another thread about this, I don't see the point in Costner's machines. The technique currently in use in the gulf, and used to great success in the Persian gulf, is simple. Use a 'weir' to collect the oil from the surface of the water, and pump the oily water into tanks. Wait 30 minutes, by which time the oil has separated, and pump the water out and keep pumping until you see oil. Repeat until the tanks are full.
See here. No special equipment is required.

 

[CallMeJoe]

If this thing works out, I may consider forgiving Mr. Costner for the Postman...

 

[werepossum]

This.





I hope you understand that a "moritorium" on offshore drilling does not mean a total, permanent cessation. In this case, it's nominally a six month time out to evaluate the safety issues involved.

Considering the reality of the last two months, do you honestly think there are no reasons to be concerned about the safety minor issues like human life, health and safety, or the security of our food supply or protection of our oceans and wetlands?

Jindal and Barbour need to talk to some real engineers about how safe continued drilling is, how safe it can be and how that can be accomplished. Unless they can pull a Kevin Costner and produce ready to go, guaranteed answers, they're willing to risk the lives, health, and FUTURE jobs and very sustainable existence of the entire Gulf coast to encourage some jobs doing work that, at present, is the cause of their very destruction.

That's not exactly good engineering. Stopping drilling for six months to find some answers is more than reasonable.

I picked them as immediate examples, but they're just part of the "business first at any cost" mentality that brought us the current oil spill hell. I could as easily have named others.

Costner and others like him, are the direct counterpoint to that. What motivates them, and the corporate and political obsticals they continue to face are what makes them relevant to this thread.

Ironic since the very expert engineers Obama supposedly consulted said the very opposite. The ban came from Obama and his merry band of politicians and was inserted AFTER the report was produced and peer reviewed. Obama blatantly LIED when he said the National Academy of Engineering had signed off on the ban, when they never saw it. And once they did see it, they said it was a very bad idea and would actually make us less safe. Obama snookered me and I won't soon forget it.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29972458&postcount=105
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010...-drilling-ban/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010...-drilling-ban/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...675625258.html


Greetings and welcome Taltamir!

 

[taltamir]

werepossum, you copied the truncated link names that anandtech presents, not the full link. So it literally opens a page that has ... in the middle and is missing a bunch of letters. Making all links broken.

You need to right click the original link and select copy link location. Or open the original link in a new page and copy the full address from their tab. Simply copying it from within an anantech post someone else did would ruin the link

 

[Elias824]

I laughed not because it doesn't work but because it's like pissing on a bonfire, it doesn't move any meaningful amount of oil, it's far too small of scale.

32 devices that can do up to 2000 barrels a day, thats a cap of 64,000 barrels a day depending on how they use them, if you get enough of those things it can make a difference.

 

[Darwin333]

This.





I hope you understand that a "moritorium" on offshore drilling does not mean a total, permanent cessation. In this case, it's nominally a six month time out to evaluate the safety issues involved.

Considering the reality of the last two months, do you honestly think there are no reasons to be concerned about the safety minor issues like human life, health and safety, or the security of our food supply or protection of our oceans and wetlands?

Jindal and Barbour need to talk to some real engineers about how safe continued drilling is, how safe it can be and how that can be accomplished. Unless they can pull a Kevin Costner and produce ready to go, guaranteed answers, they're willing to risk the lives, health, and FUTURE jobs and very sustainable existence of the entire Gulf coast to encourage some jobs doing work that, at present, is the cause of their very destruction.

That's not exactly good engineering. Stopping drilling for six months to find some answers is more than reasonable.

I picked them as immediate examples, but they're just part of the "business first at any cost" mentality that brought us the current oil spill hell. I could as easily have named others.

Costner and others like him, are the direct counterpoint to that. What motivates them, and the corporate and political obsticals they continue to face are what makes them relevant to this thread.

Are you aware that Jindal, along with Louisiana state officials as well as all of our US Senators and Congressmen have all submitted better ideas on how to safely proceed with drilling. I guarantee that the plans they have came up with will result in safer operations than anything this 6th month moratorium will and it won't kill the industry in the process. In the meantime the Feds could be working on new regulations while allowing projects that have already started to continue drilling. We don't lose the rigs, we don't lose tens of thousands of jobs, we don't cripple a state that has had 2 of its 3 largest industries already crippled (this will be the 3rd) AND we get it done safely. Safer than the current or future MMS or whatever bullshit name they just changed to.

This accident was caused by human error. They cut corners, with full permission from the MMS in advance, and in the last 36-48 hours of operations they made some real bad decisions for the explicit reason of saving money. The "gang of 66" plan put forward by Louisiana officials is the best plan that I have heard that would have prevented this. It is far better than any "new regulation" that they probably wouldn't have followed that day anyways. Do you know why they stopped the top kill attempt? It was because they were afraid of putting anymore presure on the casing because it might rupture and cause multiple leaks in the seafloor that would be next to impossible to contain. Wanna know one of the biggest reasons the casing could potentially fail? That would be because BP wanted to cut costs on the casing design but they can't just decide to do that all on their own. The submitted the vastly inferior design to the MMS and it was approved rather quickly. An oilfield engineer that was on the rig and familiar with the well and whose only interest was ensuring safe operations would never have allowed that. He also wouldn't have allowed them to pump the mud out of the pipe that might have allowed them to control the "kick" that caused the explosion. He also wouldn't have allowed the generators to not have a relatively cheap device that closes off the air intakes when the generators rev too high (the engine sucked in the nat gas, over-revved uncontrollably and was the ignition for the explosion).

I also noticed that you didn't mention any of the US Senators and Congressmen that have D's behind their names who are saying the same thing as Jindal. I would think that they would be more important since we are talking about Federal waters/leases and Federal regulators and, well Federal everything. Jindal doesn't make Federal policy so I don't buy your "reasoning" for singling them out. Especially when you fail to mention the plans they have submitted to continue drilling SAFELY. Furthermore, the 6 month moratorium is a joke and always has been. Could you tell me what the expertise is of those on the panel Obama chose to oversee these new drilling regulations, keeping in mind the goal is to enact regulations that will prevent disasters such as the Horizon which kinda requires just a little knowledge of drilling activities, procedures, well design, etc.. So why focus on him instead of say Mary Landrieu or Charlie Melancon? Oh yeah, he has an R behind his name and he is looking a hell of a lot better than Obama on the cleanup and mitigation efforts.

To you it is a political issue. I "think" you care about the environment but I haven't seen you disagree with the obstruction from Federal agencies in the cleanup efforts that have directly lead to the loss of thousands of acres of wetlands and continue to do so. I haven't seen you endorse any of Jindals ideas, some of which are currently underway and have proved to be some of the most effective tools for fighting the oil in the marshes such as the suction barges. He has been calling for actual tankers to be used as much larger suction vessels in the Gulf itself for 2 months now, a tactic that was used very successfully by Saudi Arabia and just plain makes sense (tankers can hold anywhere from 10s of thousands of barrels to millions) because it actually removes the oil from the environment (I know, that is a really off the wall idea). We have the infrastructure to offload the oil and let Costners machines do their thing on land so that the tankers are not slowed down by them. If we run out of room rent a supertanker that holds 4 million barrels (184,000,000 gallons) that could serve as an offload point for dozens of smaller tankers that would be constantly removing oil from the Gulf without the use of toxic chemicals. You want to know why none of that is being done? A single word, costs. Contrary to what you are being told, the CG is not acting as if they are in charge of the cleanup effort. The CG pretty much take their orders from BP, if BP says they don't like an idea purely based on cost and not how effective it will be in the cleanup and mitigation efforts than that is the way it is.

You should really think about that one for a moment. The very same company that caused the spill because they were trying to cut costs is now in charge of the cleanup effort and is being allowed to do everything they can to cut costs! The Feds have the ability to pretty much spend BPs money and obtain assets/enact plans that they think will work best regardless of costs yet they are allowing the same cost cutting that got us into this mess to dictate the cleanup and mitigation efforts. IMO, that is because of political reasons as well. No one wants to be "responsible" for the decisions which is a horrible way to fight a war.

Lastly, this moratorium will have a huge impact on Louisiana's ability to rebuild our wetlands. Obama could help support Senator Landrieu's proposal to start the revenue sharing immediately instead of in 2017 as it stands now. Before you say that Louisiana would just blow the money or it would just end up in the general budget, the state of Louisiana has passed a constitutional amendment that

further provides that such federal revenues credited to the fund shall be used only for the purposes of coastal protection, including conservation, coastal restoration, hurricane protection, and infrastructure directly impacted by coastal wetland losses.

Its not like we are asking for a handout, we bear all of the risk from drilling in Federal waters right off of our shrinking coast (as the nation is currently seeing) yet we don't enjoy revenue sharing that almost every other state does. Revenue that we have guaranteed, via constitutional amendment, will be spent on restoring the wetlands and hurricane protection. For decades we have been losing our wetlands and barrier islands. Before the oil we were losing a football field of wetlands every 38 minutes or 115 square miles a year. Yes we originally didn't get the royalty sharing due to some asshole Louisiana politician in the 60's but that still doesn't make it right that it hasn't been fixed in 50 years. It doesn't make sense to say your doing this to protect the "environment" when the vast majority of the environment you are "saving" is disappearing every year. If we would have gotten the royalties a decade ago we could have probably saved the barrier islands and we wouldn't need to build sand berms (or at least not nearly as many). Yet in spite of the current oil spill and the even more dire need to immediately act on saving and rebuilding our wetlands why hasn't Obama taken a position on giving Louisiana its fair share this year instead of in 2017? I will tell you why, its because it makes the Federal budget look that much worse due to the revenue it will lose.

I doubt much of this matters all that much to you. You appear to be more concerned with the politics than the actual outcome, the same as a whole lot of other people around the nation including a lot of the politicians themselves. I have seen posts hoping the Gulf coast is wiped out just so that Obama gets the blame. OTOH, I have posted in quite a few threads in which people actually defend the Feds continually horrendous response. A lot of the very same folk who went through Katrina would fall to their knees and thank the Lord if they heard FEMA was taking over. That is how bad the various Federal agencies have been so far.

I do applaud you for the OP but I question that why, in a time of emergency or as the President himself stated while fighting a war, it took someone with Costners money, fame, and access to the media this long to get his product that tested and into operation. He has been trying for quite some time now, many other products that have been proven effective have yet to even get an email or returned phone call from the EPA or COE or whichever alphabet soup agency that oversees their product. The Feds have completely failed to treat this as a war that they want to win. They ONLY thing they are concerned with, and that includes Obama, is CYA. At least Jindal is getting shit done with the cleanup and mitigation effort.