US 9,068,314 B2 · Area bubble plume oil barriers

Abstract

Systems and methods for barring the advance of an oil spill or for corralling such an oil spill. The systems provide area bubble plumes of air that remain coherent to reaching the surface, in contrast to previous bubble curtains under waves. The area bubble plume may be formed by parallel sparger elements that provide a wide plume of bubbles, and are suspended below the surface no more than 10 m. The sparger elements may be mounted in a matrix of structural support members. A series of discrete segments of the system can be connected together to form a flexible chain. The connected segments are desirably coiled around a spool on the rear end of a vessel for easy deployment. The sparger elements are tubular and made of the porous, resistive material that requires a greater luminal pressure than the exterior pressure to create fine bubbles.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A wide area bubble plume system for controlling oil floating on a surface of a body of water, comprising:

(i) a bubble distributor including at least three connected two-dimensional flexible sheet-like segments, each segment having a series of sparger elements distributed across the segment so as to produce bubbles across a width of at least 0.5 m, the segments being flexibly connected together at adjacent longitudinal ends and each having a primary air feeder line and a coupler element at both ends thereof in fluid communication with the coupler elements on primary air feeder line(s) of the adjacent segment(s);
and
(ii) buoyant elements connected via tethers to each of the bubble distributor segments adopted to float on the surface of a body of water and maintain the segments at a predetermined subsurface depth.

A wide area bubble plume system for controlling oil floating on a surface of a body of water, comprising:

(i) a bubble distributor including a plurality of sparger elements each formed of dual layers of material having parallel regions attached to define a lumen and at least one layer of the material being made of flexible, porous, resistive material that when submerged requires a lumen pressure greater than an exterior pressure before gas will transit through the at least one layer from the lumen to the exterior, the sparger elements being joined by a flexible grid having open flow-through holes to form a flexible flat panel that may undulate in ocean waves;
and
(ii) buoyant elements connected via tethers to the bubble distributor adapted to float on the surface of a body of water and maintain the bubble distributor at a predetermined subsurface depth.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Area bubble plume oil barriers

Life of this patent

Area bubble plume oil barriers

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20