During the Deepwater horizon mess, an X-Prize was created for oil cleanup technology. Â The winner was just announced, a team out of Illinois that was able to suck up oil from water at nearly 5000 gallons a minute with an oil to water ratio of 89.5%!
This is what I don’t get about government, why do they feel the need to pick winners & losers? Â Why can’t they just say, “Here’s a goal, here’s the prize, first person to meet the goal gets a check.”?
Better yet, why don’t they just give any private organization willing to front money for an X-Prize a big tax break (since politics & egos would just ruin any such government run program)?
Anyway, congrats to the winners, that is some shit-hot engineering!
And the US federal government will not allow it’s use in US waters because the discharge from the device still has 10.5% of the original oil still in it.
True story … they refused a similar system permission to skim oil in Louisiana because they only got 80% of it before dumping the water back into the gulf.
Glenn Reynolds would suggest insufficient opportunities for graft.
I suppose the requirement for clear cut engineering and scientific proof would cut into the ability to collect bribes…