Page 40: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 1971)

Lockheed To Design

Oil Spill Remover

For U.S. Coast Guard

An oil spill recovery system to sweep up oil slicks on the high seas will be designed by Lockheed

Missiles & Space Co., Sunnyvale,

Calif., under contract to the U.S.

Coast Guard. The contract award was announced in Washington,

D.C. at the Conference on the Pre- vention and Control of Oil Spills, sponsored by the Coast Guard, the

Environmental Protection Agency, and the American Petroleum In- stitute. The Coast Guard has Fed- eral responsibility for directing cleanup efforts on all high seas oil spill disasters.

Design of the air-transportable system will be based on Lock- heed's patented paddle-wheel-like device, "Clean Sweep," which ro- tates in oil spills, picking up pe- troleum from the water and pump- ing it to storage tanks. Under the $231,000 eight-month contract,

DIVISION OF COLUMBIAN BRONZE CORP.

Lockheed will develop a prelimi- nary design, and will test com- ponents for the proposed system.

The final report is due next Janu- ary. The Coast Guard will select one of three competitive designs for prototype construction in mid- 1972. Because quick response is vital to the success of oil spill cleanups, the Coast Guard system must be air-transportable aboard the service's Lockheed-built C-130

Hercules cargo aircraft.

Lloyd Trimble, Lockheed pro- gram manager, explained that

Clean Sweep is a drum-like series of parallel metal discs connected by overlapping metal vanes on the outside of the drum. As the par- tially submerged drum rolls through a spill, oil collects on the sides of the discs. Plastic blades inside the drum wipe the oil from the discs and direct it to a central channel where it is pumped to storage tanks.

The system Lockheed will pro- pose to the Coast Guard is based on a Clean Sweep drum eight feet in diameter and 10 feet long. Ac- cording to Mr. Trimble, the eight- foot sweep will work effectively in eight-foot seas running a two- knot current, with winds up to 20 miles per hour.

In May, the U.S. Patent Office awarded a patent on Clean Sweep to Lockheed and inventor Robert

Yates, a 32-year Lockheed em- ployee. The device originated in 1969, when Mr. Yates became con- cerned about the oil spill problem and began toying with the idea. "All the popular media and the trade press were covering the prob- lem, and I kept thinking there's g-ot to be a better way," said Mr.

Yates. "I built a model in my shop at home, and w'hen it work- ed, 1 brought it in to the Ocean

Systems department at Lockheed."

The result, two years later, is

Clean Sweep, a patent, a Coast

Guard contract and a number of very promising commercial possi- bilities. "One of the advantages of Clean

Sweep is the ability to work in high seas and current," said Mr.

Trimble. "Tests show that the de- vice works effectively with the wa- ter level anywhere within the cen- tral two-thirds of its diameter.

With proper flotation to keep the partially submerged drum follow- ing the contour of the swells, an eight-foot device will easily per- form in eight-foot swells." He ex- plained that as the device rotates in a slick, the vanes slice into the oil, bringing the petroleum inside the drum. As the vanes move up from the water, their overlapping position keeps the petroleum inside the drum and helps build up the oil coating on the discs.

Lockheed officials see other ap- plications than meeting the Coast

Guard requirement for a high seas oil sweeper. They believe smaller

Clean Sweep units could be used in harbors and naval installations, operating from small craft, or be placed in permanent positions in the effluent channels of riverside industries, defense installations and oil refineries. "It isn't a complicated mecha- nism," said Mr. Trimble, "so it can be scaled according to the job."

Humboldt To Build

Diesel Towboat

A towboat measuring 58 feet by 21 feet is being built for Canton

Towing Service, Canton, Mo., by

Humboldt Boat Service, St. Louis,

Mo. The vessel will be powered by two Cummins diesels producing 740 hp. all bronze... and 10 yurds uiide

The propeller shown is 90,000 lbs., 23 feet in diameter and will be installed on the

DOCTOR LYKES—world's largest dry cargo commercial ship—being built at General

Dynamics Quincy Ship- building Division, Quincy,

Mass. new Ferguson Propellers finished to 100,000 30 foot diameter - in all bronze alloys lbs

We put the best into a new wheel . . . get the most out of a reconditioned one . . . and the best includes not only mate- rials but a superior "know-how" gained from producing propellers for most of the nation's largest ship owners and op- erators for over three quarters of a cen- tury. Ferguson skill will insure good-as- new quality in a reconditoned wheel at a fraction of the replacement cost.

PROPELLER & RECONDITIONING LTD. • 1132 CLINTON ST., HOBOKEN, N.J. 07030 42 Maritime Reporter/Engineering News