Fredericton inventor claims to have oil spill solution
Published Thursday June 24th, 2010
Fredericton inventor Dr. George Sutherland thinks he has the solution to cleaning up the millions of barrels of oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from a damaged British Petroleum undersea well.
He has developed and tested a product that is safe, cheap, non-toxic and cleans oil out of water at the molecular level.
The only problem is he can't get anybody to listen to him.
"It has been very frustrating," Sutherland told The Daily Gleaner this week.
"We've had a series of investors who claimed they had money "¦ and when it came time to pay up the dollars weren't there."
Another time Sutherland's technology was about to be used full scale for the first time and the company he was working with went bankrupt.
Sutherland, who has a PhD in chemistry from the University of New Brunswick, has also contacted government officials and major oil companies.
"Nothing seems to happen," he said.
Sutherland's invention is called microencapsulating flocculating dispersion or MFD.
Exactly what it is made of is top secret.
In its basic form it looks like little clear plastic beads. But when it's turned into liquid form and sprayed on oily water and mixed, it makes the oil clump together so it's easy to handle.
It takes only seconds and one pound of MFD will treat 10,000 gallons of water.
"It is safe," said the 56-year-old scientist. "The polymer itself is food-contact grade."
Sutherland is confident that MFD will work on the open ocean.
He said MFD, which is patented, can be produced as a sponge-like solid that absorbs oil or it could be sprayed onto the ocean as a liquid to make the oil clump up and float where it can be easily scooped up.
"It actually works better in sea water than it does in fresh water," he said.
Sutherland remembers the exact eureka moment when the idea for MFD came to him.
"I had been working with micropore polymers in fibre form for quite a few years before that for separating oil on water and I was also aware of the MFD dispersion," he said.
"I don't know how to explain it. But at 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning March 23, 1998 I sat bolt upright in bed and said that liquid can solidify oil.
"Four hours later I was in my lab looking at the first oil-MFD solid."
Sutherland's company is called Sutherland Separations Systems and at that time had a lab in the Enterprise UNB building in Fredericton.
Sutherland said using MFD oil recovery operations would be 20 per cent cheaper than traditional methods and require far less massive equipment.
He said the ingredients in MFD are common and inexpensive. He said one ingredient is already used in the glue on cereal box lids.
Ross Gilders, pilot plant manager at the Research and Productivity Council in Fredericton, has worked extensively with Sutherland on MFD.
"I have never seen anything as effective as MFD," he said. "It cleans the water."
Gilders said MFD has been extensively tested on water that is contaminated with oil at the concentration of 50,000 parts per million or five per cent oil.
After it is mixed with MFD there is less than one part per million oil left in the water, he said.
That isn't drinkable but it is safe to release into the environment, said Gilders.
RPC has overseen two large scale tests of MFD and ironically one of them six years ago was for British Petroleum at a facility they own in Trinidad and Tobago.
"They were impressed," said Gilders.
But at the last minute BP decided not to invest in MFD, he said.
Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, also did a pilot project a few years later.
"Those tests were very successful," said Gilders.
"We had crystal clear water coming out and even recovered the oil for them. They wanted to follow up with a pilot."
That is when the problems with the investors began.
Gilders said another problem facing the commercial use of MFD is that it has not yet been approved by the EPA for use in American waters.
If anyone wants to see MFD in action they can view a four-minute video made several years ago by Sutherland at YouTube by searching for "MFDSutherland."
In the four-minute video he dips duck feathers into oily water and they come out covered in oil.
After MFD is added to the oily water, new duck feathers are immersed and they come out clean.
Then he scoops the congealed oil out of the water by hand - something normally impossible with oily water - and uses a paper towel to squeeze the water out of the oil, leaving an oil cake which can be safely handled.
Theoretically, MFD in its sponge form could even plug the gushing BP oil well beneath the Gulf of Mexico, said Sutherland.
Robot submersibles could force a large sponge into the broken pipe and it would absorb the escaping oil, expand and block the rupture, he said.
And it doesn't just work on oil. The inventor said it works on other contaminants in water such as heavy metal.
Sutherland said he would welcome a call from any investor who reads about MFD.
"The potential is just enormous," he said.
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I wonder what the EPA is thinking about all the oil that is polluting the Gulf of Mexico. After all it has been approved hasn't it?