Perspectives on Innovation

The days and weeks pass, and oil continues to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. And as time marches on, we continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline. Because of the importance and magnitude of this disaster, and because we want to keep you apprised of various InnoCentive activity around this Challenge, we are glad to share during the coming weeks the details of several key solutions and ideas we’ve received from you. Today’s post is a summary of a submission by Michael White.

Michael White, of Templeman Automation, proposes pneumatic barriers made of sintered rubber aeration tubing.  Such tubing is available for aquaculture applications at about $1/ft, making rapid deployment of long-baseline (>1000ft) pneumatic barriers cost-effective.  It can be made of recycled materials, and does not suffer reduced efficiency from salinity encountered by traditional bubblers.  Specifically, the strength, flexibility, and low drag of sintered bubblers make them well suited for towed applications in which a shipboard compressor provides air to a trailing bubbler system.  Such a mobile system has advantages in three depth regimes:

1. Surface – Towed bubbler arrays provide mobile platforms for “corralling” moving oil as more permanent barriers are devised; adapting to immediate ocean current and wind conditions.  Templeman Automation has tested aeration array systems with up to 1000cfm air flow at over 8 knots.
2. Mid-Water – The depth of the towed bubbler system can be adjusted such that oil suspended in the water column is above the array and thus entrained in the rising bubble plume.  Oil is thereby forced to the surface for remediation.
3. Sea Floor – Towed bubblers can be used to “suction” oil from the sea floor, providing a non-contact pressure gradient that is gentle to sea-floor habitats.  The small bubbles created by aeration tube systems transfer beneficial dissolved-oxygen to affected sea-floor ecosystems.

Michael White, Templeman Automation

The days and weeks pass, and oil continues to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. And as time marches on, we continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline. Because of the importance and magnitude of this disaster, and because we want to keep you apprised of various InnoCentive activity around this Challenge, we are glad to share over the next several weeks the details of several key solutions and ideas we’ve received from you. Today’s post is a summary of a submission by Geoff Daly, who is a relatively new InnoCentive Solver.

This barrier solution is really an answer to Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungessers request for protection of the Barrier Islands.

The floating Barge solution will protect the barrier Islands from being further contaminated by oils coming ashore. There are available between Baton Rouge and Slidell approximately thirty-two hundred and fifty river barges each at least hundred feet long. This number is more than sufficient to produce a barrier structure in front of all the Barrier Islands from nearly Dauphin Island extending west of Grand Island at a fixed position based on the 30-foot high tide mark. The barges—placed in a row nose-to-stern is nearly 73 miles long. And the barges are there now.

These resources can be immediately mobilized within hours, not days or months, and require no dredge and fill permits or forms from USACE.

Additionally, Saint-Gobain’s ChemFab division can fabricate the Teflon barrier material in continuous lengths (this material is used for huge roofing areas at airports and places UK Millennium Dome, and is rated for 250 MPH and 978 Lbs/in tensile.

We would solid-weld the barges together and anchor accordingly, then use skimmers cruising up and down to get the oil against the Teflon barrier all the way down 30 feet.

The days and weeks pass, and oil continues to blast upwards from the bottom of the Gulf. And as time marches on, we continue to receive submissions from you about how to stop the gushing oil and protect the coastline. Because of the importance and magnitude of this disaster, and because we want to keep you apprised of various InnoCentive activity around this Challenge, we are glad to share during the coming weeks the details of several key solutions and ideas we’ve received from you. Today’s post is a summary of a submission by Ed Melcarek, who is a seven-time winning InnoCentive Solver.

This is a stopgap “band-aid” containment solution at the deep water well head. The oil is directed to the surface with a flexible structure resembling an inverted funnel.  This flexible structure is made of “Hypalon” fabric used in making inflatable watercraft, like Zodiacs. It is highly resilient to abrasion, tensile forces, and is inert to volatile hydrocarbons. The inverted funnel structure has ballast weight inside the outer rim pipe perimeter, and is lowered over the leaking wellhead on the ocean floor via a nylon rope tether.

(more…)

Oil Spills.  Hurricanes.  Tsunamis.  Natural and man-made disasters are, by their nature, devastating and unpredictable.  But our response to them shouldn’t be.

If we’ve learned anything from the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s that great ideas aren’t enough to solve a catastrophic problem.  There must be a fast and efficient way to collect, vet, manage and mobilize solutions, personnel and the resources to solve the problem.  This is why we’ve created the Emergency Response 2.0 Pavilion – to provide a place for Solvers to apply their unique expertise when cataclysmic events occur.  This  pavilion is our commitment that if and when a disaster does occur, we’re ready to engage the best minds in the world to provide solutions, and to get those solutions to the people who can put them into action.

We’ll be adding functionality to this space over time, including news feeds and other resources, but for now, we’re using the Pavilion simply to house Challenges that need to be solved immediately.  For more information about specific crises, and to get the latest updates from agencies on the ground in disaster affected areas, click on the following links  -

Red Cross – http://www.redcross.org/

Deepwater Horizon Response Home Page – http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com

Crisis Commons – http://crisiscommons.org/

United States Environmental Protection Agency – http://www.epa.gov/

InnoCentive’s stand on the need for Emergency Response 2.0 – http://blog.innocentive.com/?s=emergency+response&x=21&y=13