Why not burn the oil spills?

[isekii]

if there is so much risk involved ... why dont they put more high tech sonars etc.. to prevent this from happening..

why not use Newer Tankers to haul it ? ?

Geeze~ this is gonna affect the majority around that area for many years to come~


Economic Stress~ Ecological Stress~

 

[OutHouse]

it isnt crude oil but Fuel oil..... got a match?

 

[dman]

There is a bacteria or algae that was developed that can eat oil and break it down into less/non-toxic substances. A company called 'Bico' used to manufacture such a product and market it toward marinas for smaller scale oil spills. I think they spun off that business unit a while ago but I'm fairly sure there are/were others that offer similar products. I guess either it doesn't work for large spills or it doesn't work at all, I really don't know--I read about it some time ago.

Google Search with many interesting links on this topic. Looks like quite the controversy.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Mainly because then you would have a ocean of fire, beaches strait out of hell, and still a bunch of unburned fuel left over.

 

[tcsenter]

To this day, you can go to any beach/shore where the Valdez spill was concentrated, turn over a rock, and there will be sludge under it. Burning is definitely the way to go, if possible.

My question is, when the hell is the international community going to ban these old single hull time bombs? Screw the companies, if they don't have any modern tankers with safety hulls, they can either build some, buy some, or go out of business.

 

[UDT89]

isnt it hard to burn crude oil?? Its not like gasoline that you can just light up. I thought i learned that somewhere along the line in school

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: C'DaleRider

What I want to know is isnt there something they could use to skim the oil out of the water and then seperate it from sea water?

There is just such equipment, but have you seen the waves where the tanker broke apart and sank? I think 10-20 foot waves would preclude using containment booms and such.

They've got it contained mostly, and they'll probably get salvage ships (the size and shape of an oil platform) to come and suck up the oil as far as possible. Those ships are so massive that you can have 50 foot waves without the ship even moving, and are used to (for example) tackle full tankers out of the water if they sink.

 

[Stifko]

How the fsck did that tanker break in two anyway? WHo was the idiot that loaded such a POS full of oil in the first?

 

[sandorski]

They need a couple thousand gallons of Dawn!

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: kherman
is this spill crude oil???

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/11/20/MN214466.DTL

"The Prestige was carrying intermediate-grade fuel oil, the viscous goo left at the bottom of the barrel after refineries take gasoline and lighter components off the top, generally used to power large engines. Fuel oil is less toxic than crude oil because the volatile compounds have been removed and thus less likely to poison fish and wildlife. Yet it's so thick, it can easily smother birds and marine mammals and coats everything it touches with nearly tar-like goop.

"It's the kind that floats real low in the water, like the blobs in a lava lamp," said David M. Kennedy, the director of the office of response and restoration for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is monitoring the sinking."

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: Stifko
WHo was the idiot that loaded such a POS full of oil in the first?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/11/20/MN214466.DTL

The 26-year-old Japanese-built Prestige was owned by a Liberian-registered firm, registered in the Bahamas, managed in Greece, chartered by the Swiss- based Russian oil trader Crown Resources and classed as seaworthy by the American Bureau of Shipping, authorities said. This adds to the difficulty of pinpointing where greatest responsibility for the disaster might lie.