October 2011, Vol. 238 No. 10
In The News
$1M Prize Awarded For Oil Cleanup Technology
After the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, a philanthropist and nonprofit organization joined forces to introduce a contest to improve ocean water oil spill cleanup techniques. On Oct. 11 the winners were awarded their prizes: the first prize recipients earned a $1 million purse for technology that in tests was able to recover oil from the sea surface at a rate of 4670 gallons per minute and 89% efficiency, almost twice the rate targeted by the contest’s organizers and three times the highest rate previously achieved under controlled conditions. The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge launched in July 2010 and tested finalists over a 10 week period in summer 2011 at O
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