There continues to be a big gap in the technology available to contractors for the actual recovery of crude and other products that are spilled. On-site reports by oil spill response managers, including U.S. Coast Guard officers, invariably point to the ineffectiveness of spill recovery equipment, which becomes easily clogged. There are a multitude of examples of this, including the Exxon Valdez incident, the Buffalo Marine 292 incident in Galveston Bay, – both of which documented incidences of this failure – and the recent pipeline rupture in California (Plains All American Pipeline, May 2015), not to forget the BP disaster of the Deepwater Horizon.
-Vice Admiral John Costello, also, a former President of the Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) during a candid speech in Seattle in 1993, described the state of technology in the industry as 'equivalent to a Model T'.
-Chris Richards Oil Spill Services Manager from Singapore Oil Spill Response Centre using the ORCATM in the Evoikos tanker 28,000 tonnes spill in the Singapore Straits in October 1997 stated: "...the oil after it has been in the water for a few days- it had partly emulsified by then although it was fairly viscous oil even before it was spilt - 380 fuel Oil. The main problem with recovery was not so much with the skimmer's ability o pick up the oil, rather the pumps' ability to drain the skimmer. All the pump types (including DOP 250 screw pumps) very quickly jammed up, having filled themselves with oil which then because virtually solid. The only unit that worked and continued working successfully was our "ORCA" inductor unit- with its very large suction hose diameter and few moving parts it was capable of lifting the "oil" from the surface (with care and experience, without much water either)..." -----Darrell Wilson Ex U.S. Coast Guard Chief of 21 years and current President of MTI Network USAJune 2015 :" I watched your video and I must say that I was very impressed. During my Coast Guard career and almost 10 years with MTI Network, I have been around a lot of spills and cleanup operations and I know how difficult the equipment can be. To watch it work showed what good, thoughtful engineering can accomplish. Watching the ORCA in action was impressive."
-From OES/ProLog Inc July 2015: "We feel that your technology can become a mainstay within the market place. As we stated in our call, the technology may have been ahead of its time 15+ years ago, but now it would appear that THIS IS THE TIME to truly work toward offering this as a versatile, highly effective, low cost solution for many years to come."
-Jim O'Brien one of the co-coordinators of the Exxon Valdez Clean up, quoted in the January 1990 issue of National Geographic Magazine: "By the time the (oil) mousse mixes with Kelp and other debris, it is so heavy that pumps can't raise it more than two or three feet".
-25 years later in the BP- Deepwater Horizon disaster, we have been told that even adding cutting knives didn't solve the problem of clogging and jamming, as kelp and seaweed soaked in oil make the cutting knives inoperable. In the area of oil spill recovery technology there hasn't been any real innovation over the years, that continue to plague the oil recovery industry! A wake up call to the industry is needed to acknowledge what has been stated for decades, that the existing technology being applied to oil spill still lacks efficient functionality.
Product summary
The ORCA is unique because it:
1. Offers recovery rates for a wide range of materials that are superior to any other vacuum-based unit available on the market today -- as far as we know, there is no other machine that can lift 62 lbs bags of sludge 110 feet straight up in 3.8 seconds.
2. Can recover 500 to 1,500 barrels of oil per hour, depending on the type of oil and prevailing weather conditions, especially the direction and speed of the currents heading towards the shore.
3. Uses a hydraulic start, so no need to worry about a possible dead battery at a crucial moment
4. Features AMOTTM controls, a safety feature, when it senses high levels of hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, shuts down automatically, hence is also stated to be intrinsically safe to use on board tankers.
5. Includes hydraulic legs that extend up to 1.38 meters, should the need arise to "walk" the unit over, deck piping.
6. Comes with a self powered hydraulic crane to handle the lowering of the floatation device overboard.
7. Uses one size set of bolts for easy handling.
8. The Universal Hatch Cover is the key equipment that allows the oil to pass directly into a receiving tank without passing through the cylindrical tank of the ORCATM thus allowing it to handle large volumes of spilled oil.
9. Has a power pack that fits inside the cylindrical tank for fast and easy transport of the unit to a spill site, including by helicopter. Something which is not possible with other oil spill equipment.
The ORCA is portable, self-contained, independent unit that is easy to operate, safe to use, and can be used in many applications not just in oil spills, making the unit economically viable to the OSRO's.
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