Ok, so an oil rig broke and now oil is spilling all over the Gulf of Mexico. So now all this oil is floating there and killing fish and things. But since it’s just floating in the water, is there any way to take it out; to separate the oil from the water and store the oil. This would solve two problems. It would keep the oil from killing the fish and also save the oil.
So, are we doing this, and if not, why not? Is it possible to do?
To some extent it’s already being done, but it is not all that easy to sweep up oil on the water. The recovery task force is using a combination of collection, burning (once pools of oil are corralled by booms) and dispersants (to break up and sink the oil). AFAIK the collected oil is indeed being separated from any water collected with it and being transported to shore as product for later refining.
Attempts are being made right now, using the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship, to intercept at least some of the flow at seabed. There are numerous technical problems with this strategy, not all of which have been solved and tested. A significant issue is that the oil contains a considerable amount of natural gas; due to the cold temperatures at the seabed lcoation of the leak, when the natural gas comes in contact with seawater it tends to form a slushy, ice-like solid called methane hydrates. This tends to plug the pipes intended to conduct the fluids to surface unless heating and/or injection of an anti-freeze compound, such as methanol, can be done, or if the fluids can be recovered before they come in contact with seawater. All of these techniques may be tried over the next few days, but it is not known at present whether they will work efficiently. If this does work, the Enterprise has on-board facilities to process and separate the gas/oil/water mix recovered. The recovered procuct will be transferred to boats or barges for transport to shore.
The Gulf of Mexico is not a placid birdbath. Attempting to collect the oil isn’t easy. Now add in the evidence that the oil is coming out not at 5,000 barrels day day but 70,000 barrels a day (an Exxon Valdez accident every four days) and much of it may actually be well below the surface and we may have the worst man made environment disaster in history. Just wait until it hits the pristine Florida beaches, rounds the tip of Florida and heads up the East Coast. Until then it’s out of sight, out of mind for many people.
Recovery is difficult and expensive.
Further the recovered material is highly degraded.
The volatile fractions will have evaporated off. What remains is closer to tar and due to wave action forms an oil/salt water mousse. The mousse contains a high proportion of water. You can burn it, but it burns at a low temperature and is very dirty. Think of burning green wood, but worse. You would cause damage to any commercial furnace where it was used if a substantial portion of the feedstock was mousse.