http://www.tiehh.ttu.edu/documents/Mid-South%20Farmer.pdf
What’s wrong with this idea? If it’s legit, why aren’t they doing it?
I suspect the coming weeks and months will allow plenty of opportunity for testing of every scheme and method out there for cleaning up oil spills.
Nothing wrong with the ideas presented.
Slight problem with the scale.
A previous thread Rednecks to the rescue? on the same theme.
Now ginned cotton trash will absorb more oil than the dried hay, but the 7,000MT of material offered wouldn’t be sufficient to absorb one day’s spill. Not that the US couldn’t source plenty of gin waste.
Would also be an interesting logistical exercise to collect all the cotton trash again.
Idea #2 from Albert Glass that “an expired U.S. patent that cotton gin waste contains a living bacteria similar to those found in yogurt that will biodegrade the hydrocarbons in the chemical spill.” hence “Cotton Gin Waste can effectively biodegrade oil in water without having to remove the waste/oil mix from the water afterwards” can be discounted as quackery, as discussed in several threads e.g. “Is it true that natural oil eating organisms will gobble up most of the Gulf oil spill?”
Idea #3 that "a nonwoven blanket called ‘fibertect’ that can absorb 15 grams of oil per one gram of material. The cotton soaks up the oil and traps the vapors in the carbon. It is two or three times more absorbent than synthetic materials. After the oil is rung out of the ‘blanket,’ the product can be reused. "
Now I’m not sure about how you handle a product that is almost 95% oil. I guess that in a test tube those levels might be achievable. Out in the field this “blanket” will also absorb the salt water etc. So let’s discount the amount of oil by a factor of 10, making it roughly gram per gram.
At 8 barrels of oil per tonne, you’d need a blanket weighing 625 MT, to soak up the 5,000 barrels spilt each day, though after squeezing it you could use it again. A guess you could jerry-rig a bank of Super-Soppers to be the wringer? How long would that take to knit the blanket?
Now all ideas are good, but magic bullets are a bit short on the ground.
Activated carbon granules, dropped from the air to absorb and sink the oil in situ would be my offering, though I’m not convinced that would be adequate with the oil/water mousse.
Personally I’m of the unfashionable view that the best minds available on how to cap and recover the material are working 24/7 on the problem, increasingly shrill protests notwithstanding.