Kevin Costner says he has the solution that will save the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s ruinous oil catastrophe. He’s not kidding. Watch him talk about this machine that, according to him, extracts 97% of oil from the water.
Costner has been funding this project for 15 years (and invested at least 20 million dollars!), which was spearheaded by his brother. They have a model that processes 200 gallons of water per minute. I don’t know how if it will work in open waters, but it won’t hurt to try. And if it works, let’s build a navy of these things now.
There is a problem though:
This is well intentioned, but would require huge quantities of these devices and/or much larger ones.
Here is why:
MATH
The most heavy duty of these prototypes is said to handle 200 gallons a minute.
200 / 42 = 4.76 barrels per minute.
It is estimated that 50,000 barrels a day, or 2,100,000 gals per day (34.7 barrels per min), is being leaked.
Apparently BP has already ordered 32 of these. They’ll have to get a whole lot more.
Let’s hope they work.