oil spill remedies

About 2 weeks ago I heard on the radio that there are numerous companies down south who each have their own innovative method for quickly sucking / skimming / cleaning crude oil out of the ocean .... but they had thus far been unable to interest BP in such wares. Meanwhile, BP seems content to go it alone. While it remains difficult to know with much certainty what, exactly, they are doing to clean up their mess, whatever they are doing, they recently announced it is costing them $27 million a day. Based on the apparent lack of results, this kind figure seems to be obviously way over inflated....but I have to wonder if they are factoring into this figure how much lost revenue they are losing because the oil is spilling into the ocean and not into people's gas tanks ? In other words, how does somebody legitimately spend $27 million a day on cleanup efforts that produce very little in the way of observable results?

Anyway, here is a local foreigner who came up with his own seemingly simple solution.....but he too is having trouble getting BP's attention.

http://kdka.com/local/Oil.spill.filter.2.1742909.html


----------

Hundreds of miles from the massive oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico, Professor Di Gao has been working on something in a lab at the University of Pittsburgh – a filter he believes could be used quickly and relatively inexpensively to help clean up the gulf.

"I would be glad to help in any [way] I can," he said.

All they use is cotton fabric. They soak it in a chemical polymer and although it could air dry, they do it in an oven. Using sea water he got from the gulf, he adds in even more oil.

"It's basically crude oil," Gao described.

The oily mess goes through the filter and comes out nearly perfectly clear. And unlike some other clean up methods, Gao says the oil can be recovered.

"You can basically recover the crude oil instead of disposing of the crude oil while cleaning the water," he explained.

So far, he has not been able to get anyone in charge to adopt the plan.

"We're trying to contact the people who make decisions, but so far, you know, I haven't been able to talk to any important people yet," Gao said.

He says the folks in charge have been bombarded with thousands of ideas. He's working on a bigger version of his idea – essentially a big bucket that would skim across the water's surface.

He says the chemical polymer would not hurt the environment and it turns out he and his students were working on this before the oil spill ever happened.

© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. Tweet