BP buys into Kevin Costner's oil spill clean up plan, orders 32 separators
by Sebastian Blanco on Jun 16th 2010 at 4:27PM 
One of the weirdest parts of the BP oil spill is the work that actor Kevin Costner is doing to help clean up the spill. Except that it's really not that weird at all. We just weren't that aware of the work Costner has been doing on oil cleanup work with his Costner Industries company and Ocean Therapy Solutions since his interest was piqued after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. After all this time developing and promiting his oil separation devices, OTS now has some good news to report: BP is "excited" about the potential for Costner's centrifuges to help get some of BP's mess out of the Gulf water. The excitement was realized with BP's order of 32 of the machines, some of which can clean 200 gallons a minute and extract 2,000 barrels of oil per day.According to OTS and ABC News, Costner spent $20 million of his own money to develop the separators which apparently leave the "water 99 percent clean of crude." Seems like a better idea than buying a million Priuses a day.
There a video of Costner talking about the device after the jump.
[Source: ABC News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Chris 4:45PM (6/16/2010)
He sure did diversify his portfolio.
Reply
Jei 9:15AM (6/17/2010)
This is crazy...how things seem to work out (for the good). TMZ had recently caught up with Costner and asked him if the govt should use his oil separator tech for the Gulf cleanup. They joked about him really getting a govt contract to help the Gulf environment, but he wasn't all that amused. Seems like common sense has made its way through the correct channels to get the Costner tech in use.
Tim 9:29AM (6/17/2010)
Costner's oil separator machine - how it works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xYeNUNhkgo
Hey, someone actually putting HIS money where his mouth is instead of asking some crony politician to get the gov't to take it from some poor schmuck taxpayers.
Middle Way 4:45PM (6/16/2010)
Yeah right.. next thing you'll be telling me is that Al Franken is a senator and Arnold Schwarzenneger is the governor of California..
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Middle Way 4:47PM (6/16/2010)
and while i'm at it...
insert joke about waterworld here.
otiswild 5:13PM (6/16/2010)
What's next, some exotic foreign sex symbol inventing the technology that powers several billion cellphones?
nrb 11:51PM (6/16/2010)
You forgot about Jesse 'The Body' Ventura.
Ah crap, Minnesota wants us all to suppress that memory.
Chris H. 1:55AM (6/17/2010)
@ otiswild... Hedy Lamarr?
Dave 10:58AM (6/17/2010)
...and Ronald Reagan...
calculator 5:16PM (6/16/2010)
Per his website it would take three machines a full day to process the water in one olympic size swimming pool (660,000 gallons). Thirty two machines won't make a dent!
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peakman4 5:43PM (6/16/2010)
Each machine can do 2000 barrels per day. That times 32 is 64,000 barrels. Current estimates are 40,000 spilling into the gulf per day. As you can see, it will make a dent!
David Martin 5:48PM (6/16/2010)
660,000 gallons /42 =15,714 barrels
Divided by 3 = 5,238 barrels/day per machine
Times 32 = 167,619 barrels/day
Upper estimate of the spill so far 80,000 barrels/day.
They are being cautious.
As to why the estimates have increased, it is due to the sand in the oil and gas abrading the edges of the leak:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611
This process likely has an upper limit though as any well does, - if they had not messed it up it would be a very good producing well.
cjet999 5:50PM (6/16/2010)
Peakman - Your equation is quite flawed...
David Martin 5:50PM (6/16/2010)
Thanks, peakman. As you can see I did not bother to check the site!
That will teach me!
Rnewcomb 6:25PM (6/16/2010)
If the oil Industry leaders would have honestly and previously acknowledged their true level of responsibility in relationship to the environmental impact of oil spills, these machines could've been in place within moments of the disaster. Its like managing a huge apartment building with no fire extinguishers. Yes theres a large cost to getting the extinguishers but compared to the cost of a fire, the cost would be minimal.
kballs 1:26AM (6/17/2010)
With the oil already in the water, you can't just calculate the amount of oil they can separate per day and compare how much oil is leaking per day, you need to include all the oil that has already leaked and all the water in the area of the spill... and you get like 10,000 cubic miles of oil/water mix. So that's like 11,011,171,474,285,700 gallons divided by (288,000 gallons day * 32 machines = 9,216,000 gallons day) = 1,194,788,571 days = 3,273,393 years.
Yes that's 3.27 million years!
Joeviocoe 4:29AM (6/17/2010)
@kballs
That is a faulty assumption. The Oil does NOT dissolve evenly into the entire volume of water. It floats (for the most part). And can be seen via satellite and radar.
So you do not count the full volume of water. You count the volume of oil.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-facts
100,000,000 gallons ALREADY spilled... divided by (288,000 gallons day * 32 machines = 9,216,000 gallons day) = about 11 days.
**Assuming the separators are given the exact location of every drop, and have instant access to the oil.**
Then 2,500,000 gallons per day spilled during those 11 days = an additional 27 million gallons. Which could take 3 more days.
Then the 7.5 million gallons spilled in those 3 days will be collected in less than 1 day.
So 15 or 16 days total.
And that is providing no other method of capture or slow down of the leak. And providing the separators work perfectly.
Joeviocoe 4:36AM (6/17/2010)
Or working backwards from the source of the leak first rather than the shoreline out.
9,216,000 gallons day cleaned - 2,500,000 spilling each day = 6,716,000 gallons being cleaned each day for "already been spilled oil".
100,000,000 divided by 6,716,000 = 14.9 days
Joeviocoe 4:52AM (6/17/2010)
But I think I used kball's 288,000 gallons per day for EACH machine. Which was an error. That should have been for all 32 machines.
2,000 barrels of oil per day = 84,000 gallons per day x 32 machines =
2,688,000 gallons per day.
The current rate of spill will have to be less than 2 million gallons per day.
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2,688,000 gallons day cleaned - 2,000,000 spilling each day = 688,000 gallons being cleaned each day for "already been spilled oil".
100,000,000 divided by 688,000 = 145 days
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Or we can assume the "currently spilling" amount will be capped off soon. And only focus on the 100,000,000 gallons currently spilled.
100,000,000 divided by 2,688,000 = 37.2 days
+++++++++++++++++
So basically, 32 would not be enough for both the currently spilling oil AND the already been spilled oil. But it could do the job for either one just fine.
David Martin 5:10AM (6/17/2010)
The assumptions of the amount of oil already released are likely too pessimistic.
Check out the link I have provided to the Oil Drum discussion.
Sand in the oil and gas mixture will have abraded the original hole, making it bigger, so the flow rate is unlikely to have remained constant.
The original estimates of 5,000bd and so on may well have been in the right ballpark, but the leak has increased over time to it's present size of perhaps 40,000 bd or so.