PLUMASORB FOR OIL SPILLS

Common methods of dealing with oil spills involve poisons, but bird feathers are designed to collect oil and reject water. in a tailored size of "quilting"; product can be shipped on a roll, dispensed by a barge; also sized for the body of water in question, and after absorbing spill, which it does quite magically, without also absorbing water; it can be reeled back in and the oil expressed at the same time, stored in the tank under the barge. Besides being common and cheap; feathers are organic, harmless, designed for the job. That is the message the sea birds gave us when they appeared drowning in oil. 

Massive oil spills  are toxic and very destructive. Dealing with them in this eco-friendly way would provide an industry and many jobs. 

As noted, feathers are readily available anywhere they are processed for food; organic and easily handled. The type of covering imagined is common in vegetable packing, flexible and strong; allowing maximum exposure to oil. 

Quilting is common, few alterations would be needed to process this open netting type of covering. The vehicles to present the absorbent material could be easily ground-based for land spills, but the product has only been tested in water, where it can be immersed in oil and water and separate the two, a unique feature of bird feathers. 

A quick-release spool produces the product at a controlled rate on the spill; and when the absorption has taken place, on the reverse of the barge a different spool works to drag the much heavier product through a pair of pressure clamps, dropping the oil into a tank underneath the deck. 

Anyone downwind of an oil spill will tell you how their industry suffered, whether fishing or tourism or health issues. A rapid and effective system for reclaiming the oil would not only supply an inventive industry easily duplicated technically, but make the lives of people otherwise forced to leave or starve. 

Everybody's better off when the air, earth and water are clean. 

While I have tested the theory as far as the capacity of feathers to reject water and absorb oil; the water was not sea water, the oil was not crude motor oil but cooking oil. Still, watching films taken of rescued sea birds, one can see that unlike other creatures of the deep, they were seemingly designed to pick up what in fact WAS crude motor oil, hence that part of the test was done for me !  I did sew a few little quilts and did the testing in miniature, still I would not call it in the prototype stage by any means. In addition pressing the oil from the 'quilts' has not been thoroughly tested.