Current manufacture - stock oil recovery equipment pulls roughly 1,000 gallon a min but , as the Deep Water Horizon incident prove , that simply is n’t good enough . So Wendy Schmidt — as in married woman of ex - Google CEO Eric Schmidt — put up a $ 1.4 million bag for any squad that could press out 2,500 gal a minute . Here ’s the winning design .
The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge also qualify that , in addition to extracting 2,500 congius of oil from water , the gadget had to do so at a pace of at least 70 pct oil - to - water supply collected . In January this twelvemonth , over 350 ten - somebody team took up the challenge , though in the ending , Elastec walked away with the prize .
The Elastec Oleophilic Skimmer use a grooved charge plate magnetic disc that go around through the water . Oil which is appeal to credit card , pull together in the grooves as the rack turns via themeniscus effect , and is then scrap off and funneled into a take for container . The grooves act to drastically increase the surface field of the plastic disc , countenance it to collect rock oil much more rapidly than a tranquil one . A single - wheel paradigm demonstrated May 4 , 2011 filled a 32 - gallon scraps can in just 35 minute .
The full - sizing version used in the contender , which employed numerous wheels join in parallel , pulled an norm of 4670 gallons of oil out every minute of arc . Even with sham wafture action mechanism , the skimmers were able to remove or so 90 percent of the oil that passed through it .
Elastec , a 140 - someone oil colour convalescence firm based in Carmi , Illinois , was established in 1990 . Reportedly , the Elastec squad got the idea for an Oleophilic Skimmer when , at a local fossil oil spill , a wayward plastic bucket was accidentally blown into the spill . Donnie Wilson , Elastec chief executive officer and squad leader of the X Challenge squad , comment that as the bucket turned , oil adhere to its sides .
[ XTC Challenge – Elastec – Elastec Grooved Drum Research Paper.pdf – NPR ]
Monster Machinesis all about the most exceptional machine in the man , from massive gadget of end to tiny machines of precision , and everything in between .
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