Thursday, May 20, 2010

Kevin Costner’s Company to Gulf Rescue


What?

A possible solution to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that doesn’t involve government?. That’s not supposed to happen. Only government is the solution for any problem according to President Obama.

I guess the free market has its uses after all.

You know the Left is saying, “I hope Kevin Costner fails!”

From The New York Post:

This will blow your gills.

Kevin Costner was so inspired by his role as the water-breathing hero in the 1995 movie megaflop "Waterworld" that he founded a company to clean oil spills -- and BP is giving him an audition on its massive Gulf of Mexico disaster.

For the past 15 years, Costner has been funding Ocean Therapy Solutions, a Louisiana-based firm that has developed centrifuges that can rapidly separate oil from contaminated seawater.
After the Army of Corps of Engineers said the devices showed promise, BP confirmed it would immediately test six of them on its Gulf spill, which is now well over 5 million gallons.

The news came as scientists reported that oil sheens have reached the Gulf loop current, which will whip the crude to Florida and, possibly, up the Atlantic Coast.

Costner, however, is betting that he'll be better at collecting oil than "Waterworld" was at collecting box-office receipts.

"Years before I got involved, oil spills were coming and I was wondering why we couldn't clean this up," he said at a Louisiana news conference last week. "This is why it was developed."

The devices -- large, two-part cylinders -- are attached to barges, where they suck up the polluted water then spin it at several times the force of gravity to separate it from the oil.

"The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate at unprecedented rates," said Costner's partner, John Houghtaling, the company's CEO.
One cylinder collects oil and then shoots it through a tube for storage, and another collects the water to return it to the ocean.

"They were developed from older centrifuge technology," Houghtaling said.

"Normal centrifuge machines are very slow and sensitive to different ratios of oil-to-water mixtures at intake." Between 97 percent and 99 percent of oil is removed from the seawater, he said.

The water is then pumped back into the sea, while the oil is clean enough to be processed into petroleum-based products.

Via New York Post


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