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Science & Technology

Rant

Dispersants or Bioremediation?

Posted 37 months ago|14 comments|3,264 views
Nearly 4,000 oil wells in the Gulf
Written by
Altruist
Eugene, OR
People are becoming frustrated as they see oil from the BP disaster washing up on shorelines, killing wildlife and destroying critical habitat.

BP has sprayed 3/4ths of a million gallons of a dispersant named Corexit on the oil spill, but the EPA has told BP that this dispersant is too toxic, and ordered BP to use safer alternatives.

BP responded that they couldn't find any other alternatives and have resisted the EPA's order. http://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/...

Apparently just spraying toxic soap that breaks the oil up into smaller droplets actually makes it worse for whatever life comes in contact with it. Apparently BP is using this stuff because they have a subsidiary making it.

The safer alternative is something called Bioremediation. This uses oil eating bacteria and other microorganism to eat the oil and the other toxic products and converts it into harmless Carbon Dioxide. When the oil gets on shore the naturally occurring microbial community can be stimulated through nutrient addition. While the oil is still in the ocean microorganisms grown in the lab are added to the slicks along with safer dispersants that break down naturally. http://water.usgs.gov/wid/html/bioremed....

There is a bioremediation agent that is readily available called Sea Brat 4. Why isn't BP using this? http://myjohnstownpa.com/news/us-news/le...


Meanwhile we see on CNN that hundreds of thousands of gallons of Sea Brat 4 is waiting to be used and that an order has already been made but no one is picking the order up. See: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/05/21/pkg.lavandera.oil.spill.dispersant.cnn

If the MMS Ok'd flawed plans for this oil well, how many of the other nearly 4,000 wells also have flawed safety plans? Right now there is a moratorium on drilling. I hope they figure out a safe way to do this (if that is possible) before they allow more drilling.
UPDATE - 36 months ago
SeaBrat4 is just another chemical dispersant that was touted as being safer than the Corexit that BP has been using, however it degrades into an organic chemical called Nonylphenol that is toxic to aquatic life and can persist in the environment for years.

Here are some Biological agents that will break down the oil naturally and harmlessly

www.obio.com

www.spillcontainment.com

http://www.adbio.com/site_maps/EPA-biore...

Something else that may work. 32 of Kevin Costner's 'centrifugal oil separator' units are being deployed in the gulf.
http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci...
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COMMENTS
Ghost Rider 17
Ghost Rider 17
Methuen, MA
37 months ago: Here's another attempt at the clean up effort:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beat...

I have also read about using plant life to soak up the oil but haven't really seen anyone actually use that technique before.
37 months ago: Al.

What's wrong??!!!????

You said "harmless Carbon Dioxide".

What's wrong???!!!!???? Are you okay?
37 months ago: and as far as the other 4,000 other wells, everything is okay. Obama (government) has everything under control.

Phew!
37 months ago: Look at all of the oil being drained from the gulf to send to the northeast and northwest to heat their homes, fuel their electric plants (sorry the northeast relies on northeastern coal), heat their energy efficient homes (right), heat the food they cook on the most efficient stoves (right). Damn those "Gulf Coasters" for giving us all we need and asked for without out permission.

Oh, BTW... The fuel in your green machine if you actually own one. Otherwise the fuel in your polluting bomb.

All thanks to the "Gulf Coast" for suppling you with your energy needs while Obama is spending time in San Francisco raising money for Bab Boxer which by the way it the "Chair" of the Senate Environment Committee. Go figure that time scale out.

Did they not get the memo from RHAM about not letting an emergency go to waste?

Maybe Rahm is the Sestak contact in the White House.
37 months ago: You're right Altruist. In my opinion this is clearly a case of a Big Companie in Bed with Big Government (and have been for a long long long time) I'm sure the skeletons are going to start pouring out of the closet before this story reaches the end of it's cycle.

this is the first I have heard of Sea Brat, but I have heard that there are people and companies lining up down there with this solution or that to address teh clean up portion and either BP or the coast guard is telling them that they cannot try it.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
37 months ago: Don't worry Red I still think CO2 is creating climate change but relative to the toxic chemicals it is benign.

I saw a report on Kostner's oil separation machine. It apparently works well but hasn't been used yet. Recently the latest idea is to have super tankers sucking up the oil spills because they have huge pumps that can do that and they have room to store the mix, but they need something like Kostners machines to separate the oil.

I heard about Peat Moss. It works well to soak up the oil. But then what do you do with the toxic peat moss/ oil combo? I would think if they collected all of the oil soaked peat moss and sprayed it with oil eating microbials they could neutralize it.

The Peat Moss is a heck of a lot better than people saving their hair clippings and making booms. It is really labor intensive, time consuming, and where do you put the oily hair?

TCG you are right we get about a quarter of our domestic oil from the gulf. With that number of wells it is inevitable that there will be spills. We can only lessen the chance of disaster by switching to renewable safe alternative energy.

The MMS should have been regulating all of the wells better to insure that disasters like this don't happen and there should be the technology already set up (like the super tankers with the oil separation machines) to clean up the inevitable messes.

They should require that all of the blow out devices have secondary or tertiary shut off devices like the Scandinavian countries and England.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
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Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
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Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
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DiaaK
DiaaK
Oak Park, IL
37 months ago: FINALLY someone is talking some sense!

Bioremidiation has been used successfully around the world - starting with the State of Texas for TWENTY YEARS!

What's wrong with these guys that they can't find this?!

www.obio.com

www.spillcontainment.com
36 months ago: You might want to check the National Contingency Plan Product Schedule. Sea Brat #4 is a dispersant.

Next time, rant when you have the facts.
36 months ago: What do you expect. Knowledge of the trade by watching Gibbs deflect and CNN reports. Next link will be from PBS, NPR or TVIran.

They should have let all of the stuff float to the top and swept as much up as possibe the used oil eating bugs on what remained. But they didn't want that picture to show up. Not like the brown nosed media would show it even if available until after the mid-term elections. It's easier to try to dilute it using more chemicals that will change its weight and hold it under surface. That way we don't see how much there really is in the Gulf. Wait until this stuff starts hitting the beaches on the east coast.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
36 months ago: Kahlen Thank you for the correction. SeaBrat4 is just another chemical dispersant.

Thank you Diaak for some info on microbiotic alternatives.

Here is the EPA guideline on Bioremediation that might help; http://www.epa.gov/oem/docs/oil/edu/bior...


Here is another product that was tested by the EPA called Bioworld that can be used: http://www.adbio.com/site_maps/EPA-biore...
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
36 months ago: TCG part of the problem is that there is a mixture of stuff coming out of the well. Methane goes right into the air, the lighter more volatile oils float to the surface and some of them evaporate. Other stuff just floats on the top and some even mixes with the water to form a yucky foam. Another heavier part of the mix is not coming to the surface but is staying around 3,000 ft. down in large plumes. No one knows when and where that stuff might come up.

So they can't just wait and scoop everything up. Bioremediation is not the answer to all of the problems either. Bioremediation requires oxygen to work, so once the oil gets into the sand it won't work too well, and it probably won't work on the plume under the sea since there is little air there. Also while the microbes eat up the oil they use up the available oxygen so we could end up with dead zones that kill everything from lack of oxygen.

Naturally occurring remediation sometimes works well if there is sufficient naturally occurring microbes and sufficient nutrients. Sometimes adding nutrients can speed up the process considerably, so the soils in the wetlands need to be tested to see how much of the naturally occurring bugs are present and how much nutrients and how we can add oxygen to the mix to get everything to work best.

It sounds like we need to do everything at once, spreading and maintaining booms, scooping up as much of the oil as we can before it reaches the shore, spreading straw, hay, peatmoss etc. to accumulate and concentrate the oil so it will be easier to rake up, when it does reach shore and using bioremediation for what they miss.
36 months ago: It is an economic game. Unless there is very strong, international and cooperation where Congress passes laws, BP is going to show a larger profit this year than before. BP wins, everyman loses. Get used to it, or get pissed off.
24 months ago: FYI: I make Sea Brat. I also make Petro Clean. This has been a misinformation media issue. SeaBrat is not just another chemical. Sea Brat is not hydrocarbon or petrochemical based but is a microbial bioremediation product. The EPA most current information after the BP spill verifies the toxicity allegations. Actually SeaBrat was the only dispersant that was effective and least toxic and could be actually produced in large amounts. My product Petro Clean, in the surface washing catagory is THE safest chemical cleaner upon the entire US EPA NCP list. Look at the LC50 values. The higher the number the better. This is done in parts per million or ppm.

LC50 is the dose required to kill 50% of the test subjects which are small fish and shrimp. So... scroll down and look at simple green. It has an LC50 of between 4.40 and 8. which means 4 gallon of this in a million gallon pond will kill half the shrimp! Petro Clean is around 115 gallons to cause the same... but ALL our products contain oil eating microbes and the test does not account for that. Our product was the victim of propaganda. EPA tested us when we applied decades ago and then again when BP claimed we had toxic levels of Nonylphenol. Actually in the US Nonylphenol is one of the biggest selling surfactants (soap).

I had an older version of Sea Brat that contained less than 1% of this when legally I do not even have to report less than 10%! This was spun to keep BP from switching to the safer product. BTW the Corexit they used is kerosene and ciggarette lighter fluid type, oil based chemicals.

Here are the links: http://www.epa.gov/osweroe1/content/ncp/...

any product on that list that appears to have a higher number is not a chemical or liquid cleaner but a solid that actually increases toxicity once mixed with oil. Petro Clean i the safest product on the US EPA list that actually has chemical cleaning abilites required for the job.

Read these and do enough research to make your own minds up. Please do not just swallow what Fox, CNN, or ABCBSNBCBBCCNNMSNBC media tell you.

https://allisonkilkenny.wordpress.com/ta...
24 months ago: BTW, for a visual. A million gallons of water is like a swimming pool about the size of a football field and maybe 10 to 12 feet deep. So many of the chemical cleaners you think are "Green" such as ones you buy at the grocery store are quite toxic. According to the EPA NCP (national contingency plan) list which is the approved oil spill products list... I have the safest, biodegradable stuff on there. Think about that football stadium size lake of water and imagin Corexit 9500A. That product was used in the millions of gallons. With an LC 50 value of
2.61 that means 2.61 gallon of Corexit 9500A will kill half the fish in a million galllons of water!

You were told they only used a million gallons of Corexit disppersant? If it only takes 2 gallons to kill half the fish in a million gallons of water what did a million gallons of Corexit do? Well they used alot more. How do you think they did the "controlled burns"? Do you think they actually threw a lit smoke or a lit match unto an oil slick at high sea and the oil spill ignighted and burned away? No. They soaked it down with more, flammable Corexit 9500A which is petrochemical based and hid the issue from you while pouring money into PR.

So when you see an oil spill and they say "dispersant" they are actually pouring more of the same onto it so it disolves and is hidden from you. That's why they had to shut people like me up with misinformation. They get rid of thier toxic watse byproducts from the industry by putting them in a bottle and calling it "Cleaner." And you eat it in small doses then wonder why you have ADD or Fatigue, or gout, or prostate cancer?

The same entities who own the major energy/ oil companies, and the big pharma/ chemical/ drugs and the weapons/aerospace and the insurance companies and the media have influence over all of this. They then tell you what to think between a right left game so while you are distracted they profit off what will be $7 per gallon gas and high medical insurance costs.

I can assure you I never in my life decided I wanted to make money by selling poison or toxic waste. They could not allow products like ours to work in your eyes. That would awaken you and they would have to stop the negative process. BP said they didn't know about any other products ad that they were testing us to hold us up and keep up out of the "game." They have been buying from me for decades! Why do you think they called in the first place?

Petro Clean is a liquid cleaner made to render flammable spills non flammable then bioremediate so microbes "eat up the contamination." I have sold the industry between 50 to 100 thousand gallons a year for decades. They know about it and the good people like it. But somewhere at the top... they do not really want to clean up anything. At the "top" they do not care what you think because they will tell you what to think through major media owned by GE or some other related mega, multinational corp.

Research and look at what they actually do. Don't just listen to CNN/Fox or AP junk.

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