Could Solar-Powered Nanofilter Robots Clean the Gulf Oil Spill?

Senseable City, developed by MIT to address the issue of urban infrastructure as it relates to digital technology, is planning to compete for the newly announced $10-million X Prize for a cleanup solution to the BP Gulf oil spill.

Called the Seaswarm project, the initiative is one of 42 under the auspices of MIT’s Senseable City since 2004. Project Director Carlo Ratti, Associate Director Assaf Biderman and their team have developed a robot named Seaswarm, powered by solar panels on its “head.”

The robot cleans up floating oil by catching it on a nanowire-covered conveyer belt. The captured oil is then “wrung out” of the paperlike nanofiber when the belt passes inside the head. The oil is either stored in a reservoir, or burnt off, and the newly cleaned conveyor belt is extruded to pick up more oil.

The solar photovoltaic (PV) cells on top of the robot’s head allow it to keep moving for several weeks, unlike units deployed in the Gulf earlier in the summer, which had to dock constantly for maintenance and only collected about 3 percent of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil from the broken well.

Inventors describe the process as “seamless,” because oil collection begins the moment the nanowire belt emerges from the head. They are hoping their 7-foot wide “oilbot” – a square, yellow box that looks like a short sidewalk trash container with a 16-foot long conveyor belt hanging out of the opening – can capture the X Prize.

The X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to funding radical, technological breakthroughs that benefit humanity, is currently offering $10 million to the inventor(s) who produce a viable, cost-effective solution to the BP Gulf oil spill.

The Seaswarm, replicated to 5,000 or even 10,000 units, could potentially clean up the BP Gulf oil spill in a month, thanks to swarm robotics algorithms delivered via GPS and wireless technology to maximize motion capture, as well as the paper-like nanofiber’s ability to absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil.

Even at a cost of $20,000 per unit, designers estimate their cleanup costs for a leak the size of the BP spill to top out at $200 million. BP has already paid about $6 billion to clean up its Gulf disaster with little success.

A Seaswarm prototype has already been tested in Massachusetts’ Charles River. The August trial run demonstrated that the conveyer belt was fully adaptable to surface waves, and the solar PV cells allowed it to move forward without hindrance. Best of all, the whole assembly is reusable.

Could Solar-Powered Nanofilter Robots Clean the Gulf Oil Spill?