Oil Spills

What we need to survive is what aquatic animals need as well. But with the amount of garbage (14 MILLION pounds a year), oil (1.3 MILLION gallons a year), extinction, habitat loss, and much more, soon our waters won't be drinkable. Although businesses are helping it still isn't enough. This is happening why? US.

Major Causes of Oil Spills Infographic from NOAA

The leading cause is most likely garbage but following shortly behind garbage is oil. The biggest causes are ships and oil rigs. But there is so much more such as transportation, seeps, etc. Focusing deeper into transportation I found that vents are a huge impact on the ocean, simply freeing all the oils that come from the streets into the ocean. How could this be stopped? Well... with a lot of thinking, investigation, and researching the perfect solution was made.


With the yearly amount of oil that our oceans are exposed to, twelve percent may seem small but this solution would stop around one hundred fifty-six thousand galloons of oil from entering the ocean yearly. Now that you're eager to find out what this may be, I will begin. Imagine you're in a car parked on the side of the road, then the car starts to leak oil, draining into the vent and then into the ocean, all by mistake. Well, with the vent idea below, mistakes like this won't happen again. Once the oil has arrived at the vent it will be caught by a platform where a color sensor will be waiting to sense the color (knowing oil is iridescent/black and water is transparent/blue) then soaking the oil up and disposing of it while freeing the water into the ocean. With just a few inventions like this soon barely any oil will be in our oceans.

                                                                                                   
                                                                                            PROTOTYPE             

                                                                                                 UNDER THE VENT  

                                                       
                                                          TYPICAL VENT ABOVE


                                                                                  SITES
https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/how-does-oil-get-ocean.html
                               
https://www.livescience.com/9885-faq-science-history-oil-spills.html

by Olivia