OilShaver

Competition Results:

Combined MEAN ORR	Combined MEAN ORE	CALM MEAN ORR	CALM MEAN ORE	WAVE MEAN ORR	WAVE MEAN ORE
2007	90.7%	2008	92.6%	2006	88.8%

ORR = Oil recovery rate in gallons per minute
ORE = Oil recover efficiency in percentage of oil to water collected
Full competition results available here

Team Leader Bio:

Ingvar Huse (Msc, PhD) is a fisheries technologist with a long career in marine scientific research. In his youth he was a fisherman, and has a skipper's license for boats up to 300 tons. He is the chief designer in the group, and has founded the HUSEN Company. He worked at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway for 30 years as a scientist, including a year in the USA as a visiting scientist at NMFS in Seattle, one year as an adviser to the Fisheries Ministry of Namibia, Africa, and three years as a Detached National Expert to the European Commission in Brussels. Ingvar is now retired from his position as a scientist and works full time developing oil spill fighting technology.

Team Story:

Terje Hemnes and Ingvar have worked together for years developing trawl technology for fisheries. When the Norwegian Clean Seas Association for Operating Companies took an initiative to bring fisheries technology entities into the Oil Spill Cleanup activities, Terje and Ingvar responded to this challenge, received financing and started working towards new solutions based on fisheries technology thinking. Over two years a number of possible solutions were tested and evaluated in model scale, and when the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE was launched we had a working model that we believed in to enlist for the X CHALLENGE. The full scale adaptation to the OHMSETT tank is now being tested, and we look forward to the competition.

Technology:

The technology is based on a shaving process where the oil spill film is shaved off the surface before it is exposed to the turbulence induced by the collection device. The shaved off oil is then led into a containment volume between two long pontoons where it forms a river powered by inertia towards the collection unit with a hydraulic pump. The pontoons are spread out from the ship side at 45 degrees to the towing direction without the aid of paravanes or other spreading devices. The collection unit with the pump is therefore close to the stern of the towing vessel, requiring only a short pumping line. A Norwegian patent application is filed for the system.

Team Quote:

"A constant degradation of our living environment seems to represent an unavoidable consequence of our civilization. The polluter may be forced to pay, but the damage is already done, and no clean-up operation will completely restore the ecosystem to its earlier state. The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE is important as it attempts to intercept pollution rather than focusing on the traditional cosmetic mitigation. The initiative will no doubt bring the front of this field substantially ahead and provide solutions that will work rather than the present technology, just represent a pretext to agencies and oil companies alike."