# oil tankers as skimmers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2010, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503 "2010-06-09T03:48:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/1 "2010-06-09T03:48:20Z")
Why can’t bp/the government send out huge tankers with specialized equipment to skim off all the oil that’s swirling around the Gulf? Isn’t there a straightforward way to separate water from oil and put the clean water back into the ocean? Oil and water don’t mix. ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/2 "2010-06-09T04:29:54Z")
Yes you could use centrifuges. With a lot of them maybe ten or twenty gallons a hour. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/3 "2010-06-09T04:55:20Z")
"Oil and water don’t mix. " When they do it’s called an emulsion. Now that’s what we need. A 40,000 tonne deadweight tanker mounted with a blade on the bow that skims about 5mm below the surface, with a pump to lift the oil from the blade mounted hopper into the onboard tanks. Simplicity itself. Before you patent the idea, try an experiment just to validate the science. Half fill your bath and pour in a pint of engine oil. Then with a kids plastic spade or a dustpan try to replicate your recovery scheme. Alternatively; put “oil skimmer equipment” into google and see what comes up. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/4 "2010-06-09T06:46:51Z")
A blade? I was thinking more along the lines of a vacuum cleaner, something sucking up the oil/water into a tank and filtering the water from the oil. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/5 "2010-06-09T08:38:42Z")
There are such devices out there. Kevin Costner and his brother have developed one, for example. I think they usually use some kind of centrifuge to do the separation. Don’t know how much water per second they can process, but it probably isn’t enough to make a significant dent in the current oil leak unless they have millions of them to deploy. Using a blade to skim oil would only work if there are no waves on the water. That might happen if there’s a humongous amount of oil in a very small area, since heavy oil on top of water will suppress waves. But that’s not what’s happening in the Gulf. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/6 "2010-06-09T08:52:33Z")
Damned irony chip must be on the blink again. How sad. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/7 "2010-06-09T10:02:07Z")
Penultima thule, this is GQ, if you don’t like my question, explain why. You employed sarcasm, not irony, and it’s not very illuminating. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/8 "2010-06-09T10:16:50Z")
Thanks Dtilque, I looked up Kevin Costner, and sure enough found this: “The devices, which can be taken to the spill site via barges, come in different sizes. The largest can clean water at a rate of 200 gallons per minute – more than 50 gallons faster than the well is leaking, according to the firm. Depending on the water to oil ratio, the devices are capable of extracting 2,000 barrels of oil per day from the gulf. BP is employing six of the machines in its tests.” > **[Kevin Costner's Machine Heads to BP's Oil Spill Clean Up](https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/kevin-costner-machine-bp-oil-clean/story?id=10689928)** > > BP investigating use of Kevin Costner's oil cleaning machine. I wonder why they’re not focusing more on technology like this? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/9 "2010-06-09T10:48:32Z")
Well, aparently they are putting some effort into it: [Gulf oil skimmers can get up to $3000 a day from BP](http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/08/1669552/gul-oil-skimmers-can-get-up-to.html). I found that link by following **penultima thule** ’s advice to Google (I am not sure what is problem is either). However, I should imagine that the reason that we are not hearing more about this sort of thing is that, at the rate the oil is spewing out, there is no practical way measures like this could come close to keeping up. As such, it is much more urgent to stop or even slow the flow. I think I also read somewhere that any oil recovered in this way would be worthless because it would be too much contaminated with salt (or something). That sounds a bit implausible to me, given the amount of effort that goes into refining oil anyway, but maybe it is true. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oil-tankers-as-skimmers/542503/10 "2010-06-09T10:51:27Z")
The Dutch have offered a fleet of oil skimmers for use in the Gulf. [Cite](http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-oil-spill-response-team-standby-us-oil-disaster).