

Clean up the oil spill with hay - icodemyownshit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SxX2EntEo

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shaddi
I recall reading a few years ago that human hair could be used the same way.
It seems there are a lot of natural materials that work well for absorbing
oil; I'm not sure if this is what's used in the "oil absorbing booms" the
Coast Guard's been deploying, but these are made from wood: <http://www.clear-
passage.com/absorb.html#anchor799344>.

As a side note, I think it's cool that this was presented by a guy with a
Southern (US) accent and overalls. Hopefully this will do some small part to
breaking the stereotype that people with a Southern accent are not
intelligent.

~~~
thentic
<http://www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html>

this group collects hair donations to be used for exactly that purpose.

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timdorr
My most recent haircut is participating in this exact program. It'll be
floating around the Gulf soon :)

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wherespaul
Good write up on why the hay might not work:
[http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2010/05/hay-for-oil-
spill-...](http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2010/05/hay-for-oil-spill-is-no-
plan.html)

~~~
tensafefrogs
Also think about what you'd do with the hay once you manage to somehow collect
it. You'd have all this hazardous waste that you'd have to end up burying or
burning.

Sounds like the existing boats + tools they have work fine for cleaning it up,
it's just a matter of scale. The real problem is that the leak is huge, and
there's just craploads of oil to clean up.

~~~
stellar678
Granted, this is on a massive scale that I have a hard time even
imagining...but Paul Stamets has shown phenomenal results using oyster
mushrooms to do mycoremediation.

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proee
This seems like a much better solution than dispersing chemical agents into
the water. KISS.

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invisible
Simple solutions are quite often the best. I do not see a problem with this as
it does make perfect sense. Oil floats but is not a solid and hay is a very
textured solid that would affix itself to oil pretty strongly (think getting
oil on your hands vs on a pane of glass).

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colonelxc
From what I read somewhere (I think it was posted here, but I can't find it at
the moment), a large amount of the oil is suspended in the water beneath the
surface.

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invisible
Huh? I can't find that anywhere. I can only find that it's traveling beneath
the booms put in place to contain the oil (probably due to waves/volume).

Oil is low density and by nature floats. Oil is non-polar while water is polar
(so they naturally separate). This isn't some magical oil spill - it has the
same rules as pouring vegetable oil into a glass of water and stirring it.

I'm interested in what could cause oil to be suspended beneath something more
dense (water). Perhaps it is just taking longer to reach the surface due to
currents?

~~~
frio
Well, it's not like it's going to go straight up. Keep in mind that if you
pour vegetable oil into water and stir it vigorously enough, some of it _will_
go beneath the water (admittedly, it won't dissolve into it or anything, it'll
remain in big globules). A lot of oil is below the surface due to the sheer
volume coming out (and yes, currents carrying it around :)).

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OliverSmith
In one of the videos the guy mentioned that back in the 90's there was a
reason that A LOT of hay needed to be sent to Montana or some other state in
the northern midwest. He used that as an argument for why they could get
enough hay. Does anyone know anything about that? I have been unsuccessful in
my search on google.

~~~
fauxfauxpas
I think it could be related to drought conditions (or, perhaps flooding) where
the hay harvest failed. Google "hay drought midwest south" etc and you will
see that hay has gone both ways a few times over the past decades. A list for
farmers/others to share info about supply / demand is at
<http://www.haylist.umn.edu/>

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samratjp
Wait a second, how are we to clean up the hay?

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andrewvc
With spiders of course. The cows will be somewhat harder to remove.

~~~
aresant
We just need experiment happy Aliens to clean up the cows . . .

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erlanger
They _are_ currently using hay bales on the gulf's beaches as a barrier and
absorbant.

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ck2
I think we should take the annual salary of the managers who engineered,
inspected and owned and operated the rig, convert it into dollar bills and use
that to soak it up.

I'd like to see this work but seriously this demo is far too simple, show me a
demo with a few hundred square feet with very light oil densities and much
less hay available.

