Millions of suggestions have flooded into EPA, BP, environmental organizations and state agencies about how to deal with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The agency's feedback format gave horrified individuals the opportunity to vent their anger. It also gave business owners and product developers a platform to introduce their technologies and describe the hurdles they faced in having their technologies accepted by regulators and the oil company for duty in the cleanup. That platform extended to Congress, where hearings before House and Senate committees focused attention on gaps in technology development for oil spill cleanups.

News coverage of the hearings was guaranteed when actor Kevin Costner provided testimony about efforts to obtain regulatory approval and industry acceptance of a centrifuge device developed and manufactured by Ocean Therapy Solutions (OTS), a company for which Costner is both co-founder and partner. Only a month after the hearing, OTS and Edison Chouest Offshore (a global marine company) introduced plans for the Ella G, a platform supply vessel equipped with four of the 32 centrifuge devices ordered by BP to assist in the cleanup work.

Out of the box

While the centrifuge supplier carried star power, another invention could push companies to consider stepping out of their established perspectives and industries.

Fibertect, a material recently approved by EPA for deployment in the oil spill cleanup, was commercialized by First Line Technologies LLC, Chantilly, Va. The company makes chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear decontamination equipment; personal protection equipment; heat-activated personal cooling devices; and unique emergency response transportation and support equipment for military and civilian applications. Describing itself as a "supplier of out-of-the box solutions for first responders and the military," the company has never considered itself an environmental services firm, nor were its products originally imagined for responding to environmental disasters.

Fibertect is a non-woven cotton-carbon material invented by Mr. Seshadri Ramkuan, an associate professor of nonwoven materials at Texas Tech. According to reports, Ramkuan originally developed the material to protect soldiers from chemical and biological warfare agents. The company turned the material into commercial products that adsorb and absorb toxic industrial chemicals and pesticides, as well as chemical warfare agents. The three-layer material is made with an activated carbon inner layer sandwiched between two layers of material with adsorption and absorption properties determined by the application.

Ramkuan's ongoing research identified another application: as an environmentally friendly material for the cleanup of oil spills. He saw strong potential in developing a specialized material with strong functionality in cleaning up oil spills.

The resulting material uses unbleached raw cotton as the outer layers and the same activated carbon inner core. The raw cotton layers give the material greater absorption capacity than synthetic fibers, hold hydrocarbons and toxic vapors, work on different types of oil and retain micro particles from dispersants.

More importantly, the products show that a technology effective in an environmental context does not have to be developed for that purpose. It does not have to be limited to the industry it was designed to serve. But inventors, producers and customers do have to stay open to different applications of technology and products, no matter how far afield they may seem initially. PE