How do you clean up an oil spill?

The modern world runs on fossil fuel, and offshore oil drilling powers a large part of the global economy. But what do we do when disaster strikes? Join Josh and Chuck as they take a look at the techniques used to clean up oil spills in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant is

(00:20):
seated across from me, sorting through papers, taking a last
second look at the information. His sponge like brain is
absorbing like an an absorbent might soak up oil floating
on top of the Gulf of Mexico. Did you plan that?
I know I'm getting too good at this. I'm like

(00:41):
the Robert Yuruke of podcasting. I'm just an old probe
by now. I think it's like the third or fourth
time we've said Robert York in the show. Has it
ever been recorded before? What? Robert? Robert? Yeah? Okay, recorded
and release, my friend. This podcast is going to bum
people out, especially if you have any hardness for the environment.

(01:01):
Pelicans sand Trump trimpers. This is the local economy we've
been We probably should have done this weeks ago, but
we took our time getting around to it because Josh
was a being all Japanese so oil spills. It's high
time we tackled this it's high tide or oil spill
clean up? Brother? Yeah. Um, I actually wrote an article

(01:25):
about it. Back in two thousand and six there was
a spill in San Francisco Bay and UM our boss
was like, hey, go write something on this right now.
I was like, okay, So I wrote it and um
I was happy to see that pretty much nothing's changed
since the then in four years, the technology hasn't advanced,
and we're actually using some really primitive techniques. No kidding,

(01:48):
but check. Let's let's first start by talking about how
the Gulf um oil spill started in the first place,
right the deep water horizon and oil rig in the
Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, this is claud Did they call
this a spill? I guess they're calling a spill, aren't they. Yeah.
I think anytime it's introduced to yeah, water, it's a spill,

(02:09):
because I generally even think it has to be water.
I think oil gets out of whatever containment system is
supposed to be holding it. It's a spill. So my
old Plymouth Valiant that I had in Los Angeles all
over my driveway, I'll bet I got charged for that
by my renter or by my ails. Always oil spots.
It's like ten bucks apiece. It's a wear and tear.

(02:30):
That's what I said. You know something cool I just
thought of too. When you google earth my house, you
could see my car, my driveway, my l a house,
and the oil spill. Can you really that's crazy? Anyway,
you can also google Earth the oil spill in the
gulf right now as far as I know, Yeah, all
those pictures that are coming out are just awful. Yeah.

(02:52):
We sent out UM you know, we have a Facebook page,
stuff you should Know page, and we posted and tweeted
on our Twitter account to UM a link to this
PBS blog that had a live feed video of the
oil under the Gulf of Mexico a mile down right.
Was the most depressing thing I've ever seen. It's just
shooting out plumes of oil and there's a really big discussion. Anyway,

(03:15):
the deepwater horizon exploded. The BP was capping a well
to come back and drill later because I wanted to
go start another drill or another well UM by March
and they were running behind. From what I understand, it's
starting to emerge that their May year have been something
of a rush job and capping this well. Some UM
gas built up in the in the well, it exploded

(03:39):
in this pipe that went from the rig to the well.
Cap UH killed eleven people, and UM sunk the rig,
burst the pipe in at least three places, and now
we have these plumes that are plumes of oil that
are being introduced into the Gulf of Mexico. At first
they thought it was what a thousand barrels a day? Right, Well, yeah,

(04:00):
thousand barrels a day. VPS numbers aren't quite lining up
with the numbers from the experts. No, and the government said, well,
we're going to figure this ourselves, but we're going to
use a an equation that is specifically recommended to not
be used for calculating oil released underwater. Not recommended by
oil oil companies, are not recommended by experts. So they

(04:21):
came up with five thousand barrels a day. Some experts,
like some people who know UM, have said it's probably
about four or five times that. So what we're talking
about is as much as twenty five thousand barrels, and
there's forty two gallons in a barrel, twenty five thousand
barrels a day. If that's the case, then as of

(04:42):
this podcast, recording the Gulf oil spill, the BP golf
oil spill it's going on right now, has released the
amount the Exxon Valds dropped eight times over w Yeah,
well they just actually on seen in just released like
two hours ago. They they're officially calling it the worst

(05:03):
oil spill in US history, in US history, But it's
not the worst ever, is the Chuckers. No. I don't
know if you have different info, but um nine Persian
Gulf War, two hundred and forty million gallons off the
coast of Saudi Arabia, Is that what you got? Yeah?
And right now we've got about eighty eight million. If
it's twenty five thousand barrels a day, we've read about
eighty eight million. It's two hundred forty million barrels gallons,

(05:26):
forty million gallons. That's enormous. I don't think we'll ever
top that. Yeah, And the Valdez was eleven million gallons. Yeah.
And the second worst spill also took place in the
Gulf of Mexico, but it was off the coast of Mexico,
right right, And that one was I think like a
hundred and forty million gallons something like that. I think

(05:46):
so a hundred and forty million gallons. It was the
Ish talk one talk I know x in in uh
Mexican dialect as tech maybe is wach What are you
talking about? Something like that like wahaka. You're right, yeah, yeah,
there's an accent there. So it's the talk one. Somebody

(06:10):
will let us know, won't they. That took place from
June of ninety February of ninety. It just kept going
and that was a hundred and forty million gallons. Right,
I got three more stats. If we're doing stats and
people are taking shots, every one hundred every year, one
hundred million US gallons of oil spill every year, yeah,

(06:32):
is what they say. There's there's stat number one. Um
the United States uses seven hundred and ten million gallons
of oil per day, and in fact, every twenty two minutes, Josh,
the US uses up what was spilled in the Exxon
Valdes spill every twenty two minutes. I know, isn't that weird?
It's weird, it's disturbing, but that also accounts for why

(06:54):
um oil spills are so massive. It's actually kind of
wondrous that more oil doesn't spill. Right. Apparently the um
U s Coast Guard reported that after the Exxon Valdi's accident,
there was a lot of like tightening and restrictions. It
was just such a very public accident, and it happened
in the US, so it mattered, you know. UM, So

(07:15):
all of a sudden, there's all this these restrictions on
UM tanker design, like you need to have double holes UM,
and then other regulations that that made restrictions tighter. And
I think UM spillage dropped by like fifty eight percent
between and two thousand four. Yeah. You know, Maddie Frederick
of coolest stuff on the planet. Have you ever seen

(07:37):
his Facebook stuff? No, he's just like you need a
Facebook friendom. Personally, he's like the liberal crusader of all times.
It's like four times a day he sends out. I
bet you didn't know this. He came by the other
day and told me about a basically every country in
the world that does off short drilling has this process

(07:58):
in place that UM, when there's a situation like just happened,
an implosion happens, is triggered immediately to implode and seal
everything up at the source. And he said, the US
is the only country that, huh, recently and like several
years ago, said oh, we don't need this because it
costs a lot of money. We're the only country that's great.

(08:20):
Pretty cool, Well, we're the only country with our minerals
Management Service, which apparently had has had a pretty cozy
relationship with energy companies, right, m yeah, if you think
about that, though, Chuck, this oil spilling the Gulf, coupled
with the mine explosion in West Virginia, like those two

(08:40):
accidents coming that close together can actually completely change energy
policy and it probably will be pretty interesting. Um. All right,
So Chuck, let's say that you had just gotten your
hair cut. I did. In fact, all right, let's say
you said, you know what, I want my hair to
go to matter of trust, because it's going to be used,

(09:03):
um to clean up this oil spill. Right. Remember, we
got a bunch of emails about this, like you guys
mentioned this's mentioned this that if you send your hair
to the Gulf, like it will be used to clam
the oil spill. Uh is that hair being used? Now?
That was the initial idea, and hair can be used
in fact for smaller spill for smaller spills. But they say, uh,

(09:24):
I read in the New York Times today they said
that there is not deemed feasible after a technical evaluation. No.
BP's like, hey, um, that's a really good idea. But
we are actually going to use real sorbins, real stuff, right, um.
And like you said, hair can be used, it is
used on a much smaller scale. Um. But the people,

(09:46):
I guess who have really kind of started this initiative,
I think it's a matter of trust out of San Francisco.
They said, oh yeah, um, well you asked for it initially,
so we're gonna send it to you and it's up
to you to figure out what to do with it.
And all the hair is being sent to BP and
they're rolling it in a big hairball from San Francisco,
like the size of a car. Um. So, chuck, why

(10:07):
would you use hair or a better A better question
is how would you use hair to clean up oil? Well,
I guess hair would be a sorbent, right, I think so.
So basically, a sorbent is something that acts as a
giant sponge two. I mean, it's so primitive sounding, but
it literally just soaks up the oil from the water.
And it can do this because oil uh sits about

(10:30):
It forms a layer on top of water, especially saltwater,
about a millimeter thick, isn't that right? Sometimes a little more.
It depends, especially at first, Right, So it's thickest in
the first couple hours, which is when you really want
to get to it. Uh, if you get to it initially,
you can contain it by using these buoyant booms and

(10:50):
they float on the water and there's a skirt that
hangs down into the water and it basically keeps it
from spreading. So that's that's what you want to Yeah,
and then you come along with some skimmers that may
use um centripetal, which is not centrifugal. Centripetal force is
when you spin something and it's the force that pulls
you to the center. So because oil is is lighter

(11:15):
than water, it will be pulled more easily, or the
water will be pulled more easily one of the two.
But it separates them. You can also just scrape it
up and they also have a conveyor belt systems skimmers
where like you just basically like it just pulls the
oil up right off of the water. Yeah. You know
what I didn't find in any of this is if

(11:35):
they can because they soak up this oil and put
it in a containment tanker. Can they use this oil? Yes?
Really you knew this, I did. I actually ran across
it in research that there there. Yeah, they they when
you soak it up and you use like say hair
or some other kind of sorbent, and you can use

(11:56):
natural stuff like um, uh, pine bark, yeah, banana fibers. Actually,
I don't know if they still use that, but that
was one for a while. Right, So there's there are
some naturally occurring materials that um will soak up oil
more than it soaks up water, right, Um, But you
can squeeze it out and there's your oil because really
nothing's happened to it hasn't had the chance to mix

(12:17):
with water yet, right. You just literally like they have
a dude that's got an oily rag and you just
squeeze it into a little containers as oil. So that's you.
That's your job. Um. You can also burn it, and
actually this is the most efficient means of taking care
of an oil slick. Yeah, because it sits on top.
You can burn it away. But that's clearly not a

(12:38):
very good thing to do because when you burn oil
creates some pretty noxious fumes for the environment. It does.
It's about umcent efficient though. Um. Again, you want to
do it away. It's called institute burning. You want to
do it when the slick is away from the shore.
The shore, yeah, from say coral colonies, that kind of stuff.

(13:00):
If it's just out in the deep ocean then and
it's it hasn't gotten to be a big problem to
where it has traveled towards civilization, then you can just
burn it, right. Yeah. The other weird thing I thought
that you pointed out not weird, but I found it
odd was sometimes if it's far enough out, they'll just
leave it alone and oil eventually will evaporate because the

(13:22):
sun and the waves and the weather, and they'll just say,
let the earth take care of it. Right. The wave action,
I can't remember what it's called when sunlight breaks something
a photodegradation maybe, um. But you remember when we did
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Yeah, we were talking about
how like the wave action and the sun breaks down
plastic even in the little globules. The same thing happens

(13:45):
to um oil because plastic is petroleum based. Right. You
can also hasten the breakdown by adding microbes to it, right, yeah,
the biological agents. Yeah, yeah, that's when UM like a
fertile eyes or phosphorus and nitrogen. You'll spread it all
over it and it will actually foster the growth of

(14:05):
microorganisms and that will help break it down into fatty acids,
right UM C O two I think right, yes, yes, UM.
You can actually uh foster the growth of these microbes
by adding uh, what'd you say, phosphorus and nitrogen, right,
And when you when you do add these things that
there's a there's a danger of actually going out to

(14:28):
the open ocean and creating an algae bloom, which creates
a dead zone, which is not good. So you if
you're going to use UM phosphorus and nitrogen to hasten
the growth of UM microbes, you want to do it
in like a marshal. And that's outside of the title movement. Yeah. Well,
there's also dispersions. You probably heard this on the news.
A lot um with with a BP accident and UM

(14:52):
in tropical areas, they handle they handle it with dispersons,
and these are chemicals that break the oil down into
UM basically breaks oil slick apart into little oil droplets
which can be absorbed into the aquatic system quickly, right,
but this is not necessarily the best, now you know. Um,
it turns out in two seven, uh, and Israeli study

(15:15):
found that the combination of chemical dispersants and UM partially
broken down oil is actually more harmful to a coral
ecosystem than just crude oil itself. Yeah, and it actually
didn't an e p A get on BP and say
wait a minute, this disperson you're using, you can't use,
go find another one, like now, probably I could see that.

(15:37):
I think that happened. I think everybody's taking a shot
at BPS. Seriously, they're they're kind of gentle as a
lamb right now. But chuck that that study, that Israeli
study kind of reveals something that's easy to forget because
it's so gross looking. But oil is natural, so naturally
occurring substance. Right. One of the big problems with it
is when it becomes broken down, Uh, it can be

(15:59):
it enters the the food cycle, and this equals the
seafood chain, right, which enters our food chain because we
eat seafood, which is why the shrimpers are out of
business right now. Um, And it also becomes it can
adhere to sand pebbles that kind of stuff and through

(16:20):
wave action, turns into little tar balls. They're like they're
they're solid on the outside, but they're like soft and
gooey in the middle, and things like to eat them
and choke on them and they sink. They said, though,
I mean they said, you said, you're the one that
wrote it. You said that they're not as dangerous sometimes
to the environment as a flat out oil problem. But

(16:43):
it's still not great outously because they're broken up and
they're separated rather than you know, this big, huge slick.
But you know, if a fish is eating a tar
ball and dies and it's not good. Same with like
a pelican or a bird. And then the other problem
with an oil slick for wildlife is that it gets
on it breaks down the water resistance of um mammal

(17:06):
fur and birds, aquatic birds which ended up getting gooped
up with this stuff, right, so theirs and seattas and
pelicans and they get soaked or they poison themselves by
trying to lick themselves clean. I can't look at those pictures.
This picture, yeah, I notice I didn't print that out.
I can't even I just can't even go there. Heartbreaking. Um.

(17:29):
There is also the beach clean up. Right, So we
talked about marsh clean up. You can you can add
nitrogen and phosphorus and bio remediate it, right. Um, but
you also have beaches. You've got tar balls on beaches,
you have pelicans walking around like why me? You know? Um?
And you have to clean up this beach. And apparently

(17:49):
on Prince William Sound that was the where the Valdess
build in Alaska. Yes. Uh, they said, you know what,
we want to make the beach look clean again. So
we're gonna use high pressure hoses like spray everything off.
That doesn't really do anything. It pushes the oil down
and actually screws things up worse, pushes it into the sand. Huh. Yeah, um,
but the beach looks clean at least. Uh. And and

(18:12):
they've been doing that. Um. They did that in Alaska
and I don't know if they had plans to do
it and Louisiana or not, but it's gonna be bad
either way. Uh. The other thing you pointed out, which
I thought was interesting because I had this thought too
that all this, just the clean up act itself, would
probably be really bad for the wildlife. And you said
that they use um sort of like scarecrows and dummies

(18:35):
and um balloons to scare off animals that are near
these boats that are trying to contain and clean up. Yeah,
like get out of here. We're coming through to try
and help. Yeah. And again another when you mentioned just
leaving it, that that that's a viable option, right. One
of the reasons why is because within about twenty four
to forty eight hours, most of the volatile organic compounds

(18:57):
found in oil, the most toxic stuff, evaporates, So when
you have an oil spill, it loses its most toxicity
within two days, which is good, it is good. But
the problem is with a spill like we have now,
any oil that's losing its most toxic aspects are being
replaced by new oil constantly. So we were it's a

(19:21):
big problem that's going on. I mean, you can just
look at the underwater camera feed and tell it's a
big problem, but you know, once you have a few
more of the facts, it's really big problem. Yeah. I was,
actually today is Thursday, May what and I was I've
been clicking literally by the minute to see if this

(19:43):
top kill the thing is where there're BP's latest effort
to stop this five week old underwater geyser is working
and initial reports. I mean, this will clearly be known
by Tuesday when this comes out. But they're saying, oh,
we think it might be working. Um, even though our
like shooting mud and cement down in there is sounds
sort of weird, it might be working in our big

(20:06):
uh big thing that we lowered down on top top. Yeah,
that didn't work too good. And the idea to shoot
golf balls into it didn't work too good. So um,
they don't the junk shot they don't even say work
too well, were too good, working good? Yeah? The what
the top shot, junk shot, top kill, junk shop, pat

(20:26):
top hatop kill, junk shot, big mess. Yeah, that's what
it is, buddy. Uh. If you want to know more
about cleaning up oil spills, you can read my article
um on it. Yes, there's also articles on offshore drilling
and oil spills, not just clean up, so um we
should probably cover those at some point too. So just

(20:46):
type in oil spill drilling offshore. There you go, and
the handy search bar how stuff works dot com right right,
And since I had said handy search bar, it's seems
like that should trigger something. It would normally trigger listener
mail Josh, what what what's going on? Well, this week

(21:07):
we have a couple of thank you's quickly and then
our New York announcements. Uh so everyone knows where to
meet up in New York. Um quickly though. I want
to thank Steve Clayton dot com. They do custom guitar picks. Brian,
there's a fan of the show. He wrote in and said, dude,
you're in a band, your old man band cover band,

(21:28):
El Cheap. Oh you should do you want some custom
guitar picks? You can design it? And I was like,
uh yeah, let me think about that for a second. Yes,
So I designed my little El Cheap guitar pick and
they're pretty cool. It's way cool. And he sent me
a huge bag of these things. And so I just
wanted to say thank you to Steve Clayton dot com.
And they're like big time. They do like the Food

(21:50):
Fighters and Tenacious Dah and now El Chebo was on
their roster. That's really sweet. Yes, pretty are you on
the website? Is your design on the website? Because I
saw it and it was very cool. No, it is
actually gonna be on the website at some point. So
thanks to Brian, and thank you to Jacob Storm Deathridge
who they do these cool journals made from old library books,

(22:10):
so like they'll take the front and back cover an
old library book and bind it with some of the
first few pages and then the rest of it is
blank journal style. And they sent us some of these
that was really nice. And they're at www dot book
journals dot com out of Portland, Oregon. Super creative. Yeah,
very cool. Thank you to both of those guys, right well,

(22:31):
thanks to one for me. Thanks to two from Chuck
yes yeah and Chuck right yeah yeah. New York City,
look out, New York City. We're coming to New York
June seven. We are having a happy hour at the
Knitting Factory. Yeah. We'll be wearing nothing but chaps from

(22:52):
five thirty to seven thirty. After that we're gonna put
on our shirts and everything. And uh. We are having
a trivia night, a bar trivia night at the Bell
House in Brooklyn on Wednesday, June night. Doors open at
six thirty coming rob Elbos. Trivia goes from seven to nine.
You can challenge the all star team consisting of me

(23:13):
and Josh Joe Randazzo, editor of The Onion newspaper and
two or three unannounced mystery celebrity guests that will be
on our team, unannounced and uncommitted. So the ideas you
come and you challenge us. If you think you're smart,
you get a trivia team together for Wednesday night, and
we will smack you down in the name of smarts

(23:34):
and how stuff works and our egos. Yes, so there's
all that, um, and then the the co ED plug.
Oh yeah, go ahead and hit that one. Uh well,
as you may have heard if you listen to the
Guatemala podcast Part Uno and part does UM, we are
raising some money, as we do from time to time
for noble causes like co ED Cooperative for Education, which

(23:57):
provides textbooks and and UH computer centers in a very
sustainable manner to UH schools in need in Guatemala, which
you could just say schools in Guatemala UM. And you
can donate five bucks by typing stuff. When you send
a text to two zero to to two, you're gonna

(24:18):
get a text back asking you if you're sure. You
text back yes, and you just donated five bucks to
co IT. If you want to learn more about co
ED or you live outside of the United States, you
can go onto their website at www dot co ed.
You see that's c O E d U see dot org.
If you live outside of the U S you can
donate there. If you live inside the US, but you

(24:39):
need a little more um uh incentive, go look at
their website and see the work they do, and I'll
bet you still donate the five bucks afterwards. And uh
if you want to send us an email, shoot it
to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com. For

(24:59):
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