Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan02
It's a clever idea, but the reason no one else does it on a scale like his is because even at 6 million gallons of water cleaned per day, it's a drop in the proverbial bucket and nothing really more then a PR move by BP. ~643 quadrillion gallons of water in the gulf, 6 million gallons cleaned per day, 293 million years to clean them all not too shabby.
Now I realize not all the water is contaminated. Lets say just 1% of the gulf water is contaminated. Only 2.93 million years now. Even if it's just %0.00001 is contaiminated thats 293 years.
I guess by deploying them in a couple ecologically sensitive areas they might do some good but the idea these will clean up the oil is a little absurd to me.
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That's not bad considering they're only running 32 machines. At $500,000 a pop, they can clean up a fair bit of the oil threatening the most sensitive coastal areas. It's not a silver bullet cure-all but if it works as well as advertised, put another 50-100 of those puppies into production and now we're getting somewhere.
It's not a complete solution but it's a damn good start.
Edit: another way to spin the numbers which makes this idea look pretty positive. With 32 machines, they're able to process 6 million gallons of water per day. That converts to roughly 23,000 m^3 of water processed. Lets say they're able to roll out 96 more machines bringing processing capacity to 92,000 m^3 per day.
The oil slick is approx 6,000 km^2 or 6,000,000,000 m^2. Since the oil slick simply floats at the surface, lets say they have to process the top 0.1 m of the water. That's 600,000,000 m^3 of water to go through. At the rate above, that'll take between 17 and 18 years to get it all with no other solutions being deployed and no natural dispersement. Which is better than the current solution of... well basically do nothing and try to scoop it off the beach as it washes up.
Doesn't sound as crazy ridiculous when you put it that way...