Thursday, December 9, 2010
17 Ways To Clean Up The Gulf Oil Spill
Paul Toscano and Daniel Bukszpan, 9 June 2010,http://www.cnbc.com /id/37593652/17_Ways_To_Clean_Up_The_Gulf_Oil_Spill
Hay
Hay
Road construction companies use hay to control soil erosion along highways and back roads. As it turns out, hay can also be used to soak up oil spills and leave clean water behind.
Biological Agents
Biological Agents
Biological agents increase the rate at which oil naturally biodegrades. During this process, known as bioremediation, chemical agents, fertilizers and microorganisms are applied to oil, which breaks it down into a simpler and more easily removed compound.
Gelling Agents
Gelling Agents
A gelling agent is a chemical used to solidify spilled oil, making it easier to collect. Using the motion of the sea, the gelling agent turns the oil into a rubbery substance that can be easily removed from water with nets, suction devices or skimmers.
Sorbent materials
Sorbent materials
Sorbent materials are possibly the most talked-about alternative to traditional oil recovery efforts But according to the EPA, they are most often used in small spills or to remove the final traces of a large spill. Sorbent materials absorb oil in varying degrees, with some materials swelling more than 50 percent. Although various sorbent materials have been proposed, government and BP officials have so far only officially "considered" these materials for use in cleaning the spill.
Controlled Burns
Controlled Burns
Controlled burns have been conducted throughout the Gulf oil spill. A fireproof boom corrals leaked oil into smaller, more dense pockets that can be ignited remotely from the air and burned off. The process of burning removes large portions of oil from the water's surface, keeping it away from the shoreline.
Underwater Dispersants
Underwater Dispersants
The use of underwater dispersants was purely experimental when the BP oil spill first occurred. Similar in nature to traditional dispersants, the idea is that underwater dispersants attach to the oil before it can reach the surface, thus minimizing the amount of oil that eventually lands on shore.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/37593652/17_Ways_To_Clean_Up_The_Gulf_Oil_Spill?slide=3
Surface Washing Agents
"What Chemicals Are Used for Chemical Cleanup of Oil Spills?" Rhonda McDowell, September 29, 2010,http://www.ehow.com/list_7169094_chemicals-chemical-cleanup-oil-spills_.html.
Turn oil into gelatin
Successful Technology
Stopping the Leak
The final remedy to the oil leak was a combination of a static kill and relief wells.
Static kill
First they must temporarily seal the well using a sealing cap at the opening of the well
They then must perform several tests including well integrity tests and injection tests to moniter the pressure in the well in order to confirm that the static kill will be successful and not burst the pipe once again
They begin by pumping dense mud in to the well, pushing the oil back towards the reservoir.
Cement is then pumped in to the well, permanently sealing the well
Relief Wells
The relief wells, after being drilled to where the reservoir opens, are also pumped with mud and cement, in order to stop the leak even farther from the earth’s surface.
Clean up
Aerial Sensors
Key clean up zones are identified using aerial light sensors
By shooting light through the affected areas, scientists can identify thick and thin oil sheaths using by how reflective they are
Booms
Booms made of plastic or some times human and pet hair contain a soak up the surface oil
Boom that cannot be reused is sent to a combustion plant where it is burned for energy rather than going to a land fill
http://www.fastcompany.com/1636656/gulf-oil-spill-cleanup-techniques-bp-deepwater-horizon
http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9034427&contentId=7063885
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/03/bp-spill-static-kill-explainer
BIB TO COME
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Report on Animals Found After the Oil Spill
Oil Entering the Food Chain
Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.
Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. -- more than 300 miles of coastline -- said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.
And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon
"It does appear that there is a Corexit sort of fingerprint in the blob samples that we ran," Erin Gray, a Tulane biologist, told the Huffington Post Thursday. Two independent tests are being run to confirm those findings, "so don't say that we're 100 percent sure yet," Gray said.
"The chemistry test is still not completely conclusive," said Tulane biology professor Caz Taylor, the team's leader. "But that seems the most likely thing."
With BP's well possibly capped for good, and the surface slick shrinking, some observers of the Gulf disaster are starting to let down their guard, with some journalists even asking: Where is the oil?
But the answer is clear: In part due to the1.8 million gallons of dispersant that BP used, a lot of the estimated 200 million or more gallons of oil that spewed out of the blown well remains under the surface of the Gulf in plumes of tiny toxic droplets. And it's short- and long-term effects could be profound.
BP sprayed dispersant onto the surface of the slick and into the jet of oil and gas as it erupted out of the wellhead a mile beneath the surface. As a result, less oil reached the surface and the Gulf's fragile coastline. But more remained under the surface.
Fish, shrimp and crab larvae, which float around in the open seas, are considered the most likely to die on account of exposure to the subsea oil plumes. There are fears, for instance, that an entire year's worth of bluefin tuna larvae may have perished.
But this latest discovery suggests that it's not just larvae at risk from the subsurface droplets. It's also the animals that feed on them.
"There are so many animals that eat those little larvae," said Robert J. Diaz, a marine scientist at the College of William and Mary.
Oil itself is of course toxic, especially over long exposure. But some scientists worry that the mixture of oil with dispersants will actually prove more toxic, in part because of the still not entirely understood ingredients of Corexit, and in part because of the reduction in droplet size.
"Corexit is in the water column, just as we thought, and it is entering the bodies of animals. And it's probably having a lethal impact there," said Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute. The dispersant, she said, is like " a delivery system" for the oil.
Although a large group of marine scientists meeting in late May reached a consensus that the application of dispersants was a legitimate element of the spill response, another group, organized by Shaw, more recently concluded "that Corexit dispersants, in combination with crude oil, pose grave health risks to marine life and human health and threaten to deplete critical niches in the Gulf food web that may never recover."
One particular concern: "The properties that facilitate the movement of dispersants through oil also make it easier for them to move through cell walls, skin barriers, and membranes that protect vital organs, underlying layers of skin, the surfaces of eyes, mouths, and other structures."
Perry told the Huffington Post that the small size of the droplets was clearly a factor in how the oil made its way under the crab larvae shells. Perry said the oil droplets in the water "are just the right size that probably in the process of swimming or respiring, they're brought into that cavity."
That would not happen if the droplets were larger, she said.
The oil droplet washes off when the larvae molt, she said -- but that's assuming they live that long. Larvae are a major food source for fish and other blue crabs -- "their siblings are their favorite meal," Perry explained. Fish are generally able to excrete ingested oil, but inverterbrates such as crabs don't have that ability.
Perry said the discovery of the oil and dispersant blobs is very troubling -- but not, she made clear, because it has any impact on the safety of seafood in the short run. "Unlike heavy metals that biomagnify as they go up the foodchain, oil doesn't seem to do that," she said. Rather, she said, "we're looking at long-term ecological effects of having this oil in contact with marine organisms."
Diaz, the marine scientist from William and Mary, spoke at a lunchtime briefing about dispersants on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Dispersant, he explained, "doesn't make the oil go away, it just puts it from one part of the ecosystem into another."
In this case, he said, "the decision was to keep as much of the oil subsurface as possible." As a result, the immediate impact on coastal wildlife was mitigated. But the effects on ocean life, he said, are less clear -- in part because there's less known about ocean ecosystems than coastal ones.
"As we go further offshore, as the oil industry has gone offshore, we find that we know less," he said. "We haven't really been using oceanic species to assess the risks, and this is a key issue."
(Similar concerns have been expressed about the lack of important data that would allow scientists to accurately assess the effects of the spill on the Gulf's sea turtles, whose plight is emerging as particularly poignant.)
Diaz warned of the danger posed to bluefin tuna -- and also to "the signature resident species in the Gulf, the shrimp." He noted that all three species of Gulf shrimp spawn offshore before moving back into shallow estuaries.
Diaz also expressed concern that dispersed oil droplets could end up doing great damage to the Gulf's many undersea coral reefs. "If the droplets agglomerate with sediment," he said, "they could even settle to the bottom."
Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Center at the University of New Hampshire, said the use of dispersants in this spill raises many issues that scientists need to explore, starting with the effects of long-term exposure. She also noted that scientists have never studied the effects of dispersants when they're injected directly into the turbulence of the plume, as they were here, or at such depth, or at such low temperatures, or under such pressure.
She also said it will be essential for the federal government to accurately determine how much oil made it out of the blown well. A key data point for scientists is the ratio of dispersant to oil, she said, and "if you don't know the flow rate of the oil, you don't know what you dispersant to oil ratio is."
After a series of ludicrous estimates, the federal government settled last month on an official estimate of about 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day, but BP is widely expected to contest that figure and some scientists think it is still a low-ball estimate.
There seems to be no doubt that history will record that the use of dispersants was good for BP, making it harder to tell how much oil was spilled, and reducing the short-term visible impact. But what's less clear is whether it will turn out to have been good for the Gulf.
Posted by Anjie Liu, dec. 8/10
Froomkin, Dan. "Scientists Find Evidence That Oil And Dispersant Mix Is Making Its Way Into The Foodchain." Last Modified 31 July 2010. The Huffington Post. Accessed 8 December 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/scientists-find-evidence_n_664298.html
Brown Pelicans in Oil
Pelicans Coated in Crude, Marshes Heavily Damaged
BARATARIA BAY, La. (AP) -- As officials approached to survey the damage the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn't fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.
Several pelicans were coated in oil on Barataria Bay off Louisiana, their usually brown and white feathers now jet black. Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk, and new hatchlings and nests were also coated with crude.
It is unclear if the area can even be cleaned, or if the birds can be saved. It is also unknown how much of the Gulf Coast will end up looking the same way because of a well that has spewed untold millions of gallons of oil since an offshore rig exploded more than a month ago.
"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced new efforts to keep the spill from spreading.
A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best the effort did not capture all the oil leaking, and the next attempt to stanch the flow won't be put into action until at least Tuesday.
With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana's marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Jindal said the state has begun work on chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state's coastline.
Jindal, who visited one of the affected nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags and sand hauled in; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.
At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.
Obama administration officials continued defending their response while criticizing that of BP PLC, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.
"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said. But federal officials have acknowledged that BP has expertise that they lack in stopping the deep-water leak.
In Barataria Bay, orange oil had made its way a good 6 inches onto the shore, coating grasses and the nests of brown pelicans in mangrove trees. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.
The pelicans struggled to clean the crude from their bodies, splashing in the water and preening themselves. One stood at the edge of the island with its wings lifted slightly, its head drooping -- so encrusted in oil it couldn't fly.
Wildlife officials tried to rescue oil-soaked pelicans Sunday, but they suspended their efforts after spooking the birds. They weren't sure whether they would try again. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.
Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil. Not only could they eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, but they could die of hypothermia or drowning if they're soaked in oil.
Globs of oil have soaked through containment booms set up in the area. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said BP needed to send more booms. He said it would be up to federal wildlife authorities to decide whether to try to clean the oil that has already washed ashore.
"The question is, will it do more damage because this island is covered with the mess?" Nungesser said.
Officials have considered some drastic solutions for cleaning the oil -- like burning or flooding the marshes -- but they may have to sit back and let nature take care of it.
Plants and pelican eggs could wind up trampled to death by well-meaning humans. If the marshes are too dry, setting them ablaze could burn plants to the roots and obliterate the wetlands.
Flooding might help by floating out the oil, but it also could wash away the natural barriers to flooding from hurricanes and other disasters -- much like hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed away marshlands in 2005. State and federal officials spent millions rebuilding the much-needed buffer against tropical storms.
The spill's impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.
On Sunday, oil reached an 1,150-acre oyster ground leased by Belle Chasse, La., fisherman Dave Cvitanovich. He said cleanup crews were stringing lines of absorbent boom along the surrounding marshes, but that still left large clumps of rust-colored oil floating over his oyster beds. Mature oysters might eventually filter out the crude and become fit for sale, but this year's crop of spate, or young oysters, will perish.
"Those will die in the oil," Cvitanovich said. "It's inevitable."
Each day the spill grows, so does anger with the government and BP. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
The leak may not be completely stopped until a relief well is dug, a project that could take months. Another effort that BP said will begin Tuesday at the earliest will shoot heavy mud, and then cement, into the blown well, but that method has never been attempted before in mile-deep water and engineers are not sure it will work.
The only thing that has kept leaking oil out of the Gulf so far is the mile-long tube siphoning oil from the well to a ship. BP spokesman John Curry told The Associated Press on Sunday that it siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday.
The amount BP has collected in the mile-long tube has varied since it was installed last week. The device was siphoning 42,000 gallons of oil a day early that week, but at times Thursday, the siphon was collecting oil at a rate of as much as 210,000 gallons a day.
BP refused to provide day-by-day figures on how much oil the tube was diverting. Curry said the rate is expected to vary widely, in part because it is not just oil but also natural gas that is leaking. On Sunday, for instance, the siphon collected more than 7 million cubic feet of gas.
The head of the Senate's environmental committee, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, has asked the Justice Department to determine whether BP made false and misleading claims about its ability to prevent a serious oil spill.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that Justice Department officials have been to the region gathering information about the spill. However, he wouldn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation.
President Barack Obama has named a special independent commission to review what happened. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers; the rig sank two days later.
The 6 million-gallon figure for the spill is based on an initial BP estimate that about 210,000 gallons were spilling out each day. It became obvious the company had been underestimating the leak Thursday, when it started siphoning the oil at a 210,000-gallon-a-day rate while more crude spilled into the water.
(This report was written by Greg Bluestein and Matthew Brown of The Associated Press. Bluestein reported from Covington, La. Associated Press writers Mary Foster in in Barataria Bay, Matthew Daly in Washington, Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert in Louisiana contributed to this report.)
Posted by Anjie Liu, Dec. 8/10
Bluestein, Greg and Matthew Brown. "Gulf Oil Disaster: Pelicans Coated in Crude, Marshes Heavily Damaged." Last modified 25 May 2010.
The Huffington Post. Accessed 8 December 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/24/gulf-oil-spill-75-miles-o_n_587346.html