How to Rescue the Gulf - The Next Time

By Klaus H Hemsath

The BP oil rig disaster has once more demonstrated the urgent need for the development of two critical emergency response technologies.

Future deepwater drilling should be permitted only if dependable emergency closure equipment for leaking oil wells becomes available. Similarly, specially equipped vessels for cleaning quickly spreading oil spills from leaking oil wells must become available for immediate deployment in response to a pipe break or a blow out.
No such dependable emergency response technologies are presently available anywhere.

Multiple designs of surface skimmers are available but the technology is dated and is not capable of quickly corralling the oil from wells, which are gushing thousands of barrels of crude oil each day.

Small leaks can be cleaned with equipment designs that are most suited for shallow and calm waters. Out at sea, only larger vessels can be employed. The preferred oil skimmer design for offshore duty is still an oil boom acting as a barrier for floating oil. All oil booms look similar; none operates effectively in choppy waters.
Oil booms act as a vertical barrier and are made from a flexible material, which extends like a curtain for a foot or more beneath the water surface. The assembly is kept floating by a buoyant material or by air inside an airtight tubular chamber made from the same material as the submerged skirt.

The booms are manufactured in long sections, which can be joined and can be extended for miles. These very long barriers of booms are mostly used to close off estuaries or contain oil spills in rivers and near-shore locations.

Shorter sections of this type of boom can also be used as oil skimming devices. In this configuration, oil booms form a large loop, which is formed like a U, a V, or a J. A single vessel carrying one or two outriggers on its sides can pull one or two U-shaped or J-shaped loops. Three vessels can form a V-shape; two are towing, the third one is collecting the skimmed oil.

The U.S. Coast Guard is using some of their cutters for oil skimming duties. This type of vessel has been able to collect as much as 1500 barrels of oil on a single day under ideal conditions.

The BP oil leak is bound to leak oil until at least the middle of August. After more than one hundred days, more than five million barrels or more than two hundred million gallons crude will have been spilled into the Gulf. This oil is spreading unobstructed on the surface and is threatening wetlands, estuaries, and beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Some of the oil may eventually reach the East Coast of the US if not cleaned in due time.

During the last ten years, a more advanced design of a skimming vessel has been developed in Europe. Instead of towing the typical, flexible oil boom, this new design uses two solid, heavy, and very tall steel barriers. These two barriers are suspended on strong derricks or davits that are extending from both side decks of the skimming vessel. The two steel barriers are lowered into the water halfway and their outer ends are pointed towards the ship's bow at a slight forward angle.

The skimming vessel steams ahead, the oil piles up and flows toward the hull, where it is collected and pumped aboard the ship. This type of skimmer can operate under adverse weather conditions and does not have to wait for calmer waters.

Collection duties and collection efficiencies of these vessels are higher than those of skimming vessels with outrigger towed oil booms. This type of skimming vessel also has a rather large displacement and can stay offshore for skimming duties lasting several days. The vessel can run on its own bottom to the leak at rather high displacement speeds and can arrive at the spill in hours or at most a couple of days due to the much shorter distances between main shipping lanes in Europe.

An American design must take into account the very long coasts of the USA. Advanced emergency vessels must collect more than 5000 barrels of crude, which has not been given a chance to spread too far. Such emergency vessels need to reach the site of a major oil leak in less than twenty four hours. This means that vessels capable of maximum speeds of 25 knots must be stationed not more than 600 nautical miles apart. The design for such a high speed oil skimmer is not available, yet.

Similarly, no designs have been proposed for the reliable closure of leaks similar to the BP Deepwater Horizon well. This is utterly disturbing. An illustrious team of experts, professors, and a Nobel laureate disappointed when it could not come up with a workable solution for halting the leak.

A single, inventive mind can often beat a roomful of the "brightest minds". Analysis is distinctly different from inspired synthesis. Inventors and scientists approach problems in ways that are fundamentally different. Most scientists have great analytic skills. Inventors analyze, too. However, their strong suit is not analysis but inspiration. Great inventors can envision things that nobody else has ever seen before.

Unfortunately, the modern patent system has made life for this type of inventors very difficult. In the US, not that many new products are being developed inside the proverbial garages any longer. Only larger companies or new ventures can fund the development of a promising new product and can provide the resources for staying with a promising product from idea through concept confirmation, product design, patent application, and marketing. Many brilliant ideas never make it because they are subverted by well meaning but incompetent product evaluators, managers, and marketers.

The BP disaster is just another illustration for this systemic failure. There is no hope for saving the Gulf this time. We can only hope that we learn from the BP disaster and have an emergency preparedness system in place in time for dealing with the next large oil spill.

In "Clean Energy for Centuries" Dr. Hemsath presents a comprehensive plan for ending Global Warming and Climate Change. A new book "Petroleum Substitutes from Biomass" is in progress. For fifty years he has developed, designed, and installed advanced energy technologies as scientist, process engineer, inventor, Corporate CTO, CEO, entrepreneur, and author. He holds more than 60 US Patents. Visit http://www.thermalexpert.com for information.

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