Gulf oil spill: Kevin Costner to the rescue? Maybe. (Not a joke.)

[pnwmom]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bp-calls-in-costners-26m-vacuum-cleaners-to-mop-up-huge-oil-spill-1979976.html

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So with hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, and its corporate image starting to resemble the tar-covered sea creatures now washing on to Louisiana's fragile shoreline, BP has called on Kevin Costner to help stave off environmental Armageddon.

The Hollywood star has been bobbing around the Mississippi Delta helping representatives of the British oil firm and US coastguard test-drive a stainless steel device called the Ocean Therapy. In a claim which sounds as unlikely as the plot premise of Waterworld, he says it can quickly and efficiently clean oil from tainted sea water.

Bizarrely, Costner may be on to something. The actor has spent 15 years and roughly $26m (£18m) of his personal fortune developing the patented machine with the help of his elder brother Dan, a scientist. It works like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up dirty liquid and then using a high-speed centrifuge to separate it into oil, and heavier water.

When he allowed the local media to see Ocean Therapy in action – albeit on dry land – it appeared to work as advertised. Yesterday, six of the devices were attached to boats and floated into the Gulf, so the organisers of the clean-up operation could see whether they might also be capable of functioning on the high seas.

SNIP

Costner, 55, has quietly been developing Ocean Therapy since the mid-1990s when he founded the Costner Industries Nevada Corporation, a company which funded eco-friendly research by his brother and a team of scientists. Aside from the water cleaning device, the firm has also invented a non-chemical battery.

Each of the 26 Heath Robinson-style machines now in Louisiana waiting to be deployed can clean between 5 and 200 gallons of water a minute, depending on its size, said Costner's lawyer and business partner, John Houghtaling, which means they could in theory mop up oil at the rate it is currently gushing into the Gulf. Polluted sea water which passes through them comes out 97 per cent clean.

SNIP

[dsc]

1. It makes some of his horrid movies worthwhile

if this device works. I can even forgive waterworld.

[WeDidIt]

2. If it works and they can mass produce the device qucikly

I'll buy the Waterworld DVD.

[applegrove]

4. I agree. (I actually liked Waterworld though so it won't be so painful for me).

[WeDidIt]

5. We should start a "Buy Waterworld" movement if it works

:D

[applegrove]

Yup. Koshner will be quite the hero if it works. I hope it does.

[Schema Thing]

3. I'm sure he's not the only one out there with similar devices

So let's put them all to work, post haste.


This basic premise was my first thought when I heard about the scope of the disaster - so I know it has to have been worked on by many different inventors and oil companies, as I'm no genius. I'm pretty sure I have since heard about a similar technology being used by the Saudi State oil company.

[BootinUp]

6. The rate they can separate oil

depends on how much water is in the mixture. This type of technology would probably be more effective used on water/oil that is collected by other means first and has a high oil content. Otherwise it won't make much of a dent imho.