How Do Oil Dispersants Work?

What a crazy situation... I guess only time will tell the real consequences of the oil spill and the solutions used.

Sounds to me like its not working at all on the Gulf spill.

Lou
www.online-privacy.de.tc

Just Crazy. Hop they will get it fixed

Regards
Trikot Shop

For some reason, this gives me the feeling that I might get to see The-Cat-In-The-Hat effect.

Dear Katie Peek, you said that crude oil "is made of dinosaurs, after all". Not an expert myself but I understand that its "a fossil fuel derived from ancient fossilized organic materials." And yes, many dinosaurs included.

to stop the oil leak...drill a relief valve with a shutoff switch into the undamaged portion of the pipe and vent the oil out of that, making it easy to weld a huge piece of metal onto the broken end of the pipe (thus sealing it), then close the relief valve.

i have a better idea than the one i posted above, i hope nobody does this!!!!!!!!! i'm making a pictorial and/or movie hopefully, so keep thinking, we can solve this

I think that here the advancement in genetics and micro biology could help. Why not create a bacteria that could consume the oil from the water and because it is isolated by water these bacteria would eventually die after they have consumed all the oil. We need more and more attention these days with everything we do because we begun to manipulate everything on a gigantic scale which can perturb local ecosystems and even the entire planet.Purifying Technologies
http://puretechinfo.com

Great so we are just twisting the proverbial knife now the oil Has already Fukked over so many species of animals now were going to poison the underwater species as well?? This is sickening just plain disgusting.

Have they ever tried lecithin? It's a natural food product used in a lot of commercial foods as an emulsifier.

So try Dawn dish liquid it works best on grease.

Above was a joke about a not so funny situation.
Actually what would do the trick if turbulence is needed would be to mount large centrifuges on a ship, have a pump with a hose going down to the oil coming out in ocean floor pump the water and oil mixture up to the centrifuges add the dispersants to the waste water coming out of centrifuge the crude could be pump directly into tankers from the centrifuge.

Anyone thought of releasing the Corexit at the well-head? Perhaps run a pipe down to the pipe and release the solvent/surficant/bacterial-cocktail at its point of origin.
Just a thought.

Further I was wondering why they haven't tried to drill a well parrallel to the current one but after 100ft or so cut over to the broken line and then pump in explosives or rubber or "Great Stuff" or something that expands on contact with petrochemicals.

Also has anyone read "Ill Wind" good novel creepy similarities.

Nalco, the company that makes Corexit, has been thriving for may years. They only exist because offshore oil drilling is inherently unsafe. How can we believe the oil companies when they assure us that they will operate safely in the future?

They should try pouring fresh oil, like the kind cars use, in front of the path of the oil leaking out...

I mean, that's what we do with forest fires, right?
Fight fire with fire?

I say pour more oil in front of it to stop the oil coming out.

That'll work.

@ doubled478
> mount large centrifuges on a ship, have a pump with a
> hose going down to the oil coming out in ocean floor
> pump the water and oil mixture up to the centrifuges
Uh, that's exactly what they have been doing, LOL!

> add the dispersants to the waste water coming out of
> centrifuge
There'd be no need IF the centrifuge is working properly, because all the oil should be removed. There would be lighter-than-water byproduct exiting with the water, however (perhaps "gas" - what people call the "sheen"), and I do not think dispersants work on that.. it just evaporates.

Good article. Read more about the Deepwater Horizon accident on Encyclopedia of Earth:
www.eoearth.org/article/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

I think using dispersants was the wrong decision. They make the oil soluble in water and cause the oil to spread throughout the region.

When I worked at GM, the folks who worked in the waste treatment department would use floculants to help bring the oil together and make it easier to get the oil out. They made it MORE oily by attracting short chain oils, like gasoline, to very long chain non-polar polymers.

We also used a product in our coolant systems (coolants were basically soaps) that had essentially a long plastic rope with strings of plastic that the oil (contaminate) would stick to. We could continuously pull it out and squeegee the oil into a container.

Interestingly, the oil that was in our systems primarily came from two sources: oil leaks, and biodegraded coolant. When the coolant (basically oil plus emulsifier) biodegraded, we found the microorganisms were primarily consuming the polar component of the emulsifier. The oil portion of the emulsifier then added to the total oil that had been emulsified.

Now I know that there are supposed to be enzymes that break down oil, if mixed in a water environment, but do they function in the ocean's environment? So, I guess my question is, did anyone bother to test this dispersant hypothesis in a lab or did they just get an idea and run with it?

The normal way would have been to first remove as much oil and gas as possible. Then try to biodegrade what was left that was seemingly impossible to remove.

Thank God there is a God who can save us from our mistakes. I think we need to pray for His help.

Dear God P L E A S E H E L P

Henry3: Sometimes I also wonder if they ever bothered to test these procedures prior to implementing them. You obviously know what you're talking about when it comes to oil. I just don't know if the same "rules" apply to the Gulf as they do to automobiles.

-- But nevertheless, something needs to be done and I think the only thing the public can do is be supportive of any and all attempts every organization/company is making to combat this horrific situation.

Poor little animals =(

A few of the replies indicate that we should simply PLUG the leak at the well head with something. If you research deep water drilling and the release of oil at those depths, you will learn that deep water wells such as the Horizon well are spewing oil and natural gas at rates up to 9000 PSI. At that pressure, simply trying to plug a hole with a cork would be like trying to plug a jet engine with marshmallows. It may look good on paper, but it will create a bigger mess and never work.
The ultimate fix will be the intersecting relief wells that are being drilled. Once the drills punch into the current well, heavy cement will be pumped into the well shaft and fill it full from bottom to top. Cement is the most viable solution, but unfortunately it must be pumped in from the bottom up to work correctly. In the mean time, we watch the chemicals flow and the ocean die a little more.

Oh, my . . . not the dinosaur myth! Not in Popular Science! Mark Grossman tried to excuse the comment by saying "many dinosaurs included" but that is not even true. Wiki-pedia says, "Today's oil formed from the preserved remains of prehistoric zooplankton and algae, which had settled to a sea or lake bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions (the remains of prehistoric terrestrial plants, on the other hand, tended to form coal). Over geological time the organic matter mixed with mud, and was buried under heavy layers of sediment resulting in high levels of heat and pressure (diagenesis)."
It is highly rare that a dinosaur would be buried under anoxic conditions. If 1 one-trillionth of our oil comes from dinosaurs, it would be a surprise to most petroleum scientists (even the crazy abiogenic ones).

Baloney. Scientists know perfectly well that dispersants cause more problems in the long run after doing long term studies of oil spills. This gulf disaster is just another instance of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, and obviously very unscientific.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100504142110.htm

Surfactants are explained at the end of this video about ferrofluid:
www.youtube.com/watch#!v=PvtUt02zVAs&feature=fvw

Another large problem that often goes unnoticed is the negative effects dispersants have on birds.

Birds secrete natural oils from their body and need that oil on their feathers for them to keep dry and be able to fly. The dispersants used on the oil slick when in contact with birds disperses the natural oil on the birds feathers causing them to die of hypothermia or drowning.

Shimshon,
Yes dispersant would not be good for birds but this is a 'lesser of the two evils' situation. By your own admission dispersant is used on oil slicks, not on clean water.. If not for the dispersant then the oil would sit in thick slicks on the surface and the birds would get covered in oil and would die a most horrible death.. We have all seen the awful pictures.

Latest news from the gulf: www.mwilliams.info/archive/2010/07/disappearing-gulf-oil.php indicates that the oil is disappearing remarkably quickly.. This must be at least in part thanks to dispersants. Are the anti-dispersant lobby seriously saying they would rather oil was still lapping up on the beaches and wet lands?