Ocean Blimp - Robotic Sailboat to Clean BP Oil Spill

[Guest Defenders of Wildlife]

Current oil spill skimming technology could only collect 3% of the DeepWater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The health of workers was exposed to cancerous toxicant, the boats were expensive and pollutive to operate, they could not operate in bad weather (hurricane seaon) they could not operate at night or far away.

Protei is a technology currently in development that will provide
- Unmanned, no human exposed to toxicant.
- Green and cheap, sailing upwind, capturing oil downwind.
- Self-righting, rugged, can operate in hurricane time.
- Semi-autonomous : can swarm continuously and far away.

Protei is currently being developped in Rotterdam, produced by V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media. Protei first real-scale functional prototype will be presented September 2nd at a Press conference and Festival Wereld van Witte de With 10 and 11 of September 2011. For more information please contact isidora@v2.nl.

https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/protei/

[Guest Nelly Johnson]

This seems to be a win/win/win situation for the environment. Autonomous, self-righting ... what's not to like?

 

Hopefully the engineers in Rotterdam, The Netherlands will build a fleet of them and turn them loose, then, when they're done with their job (if ever) they can be turned into gasoline reducing the US's need for imported oil. (see story about turning plastic into fuel on these message boards.

 

Thanks for the information!

 

Cheers!

 

/Nelly