Tim Lindsey, associate director of the University’s Illinois Sustainability Technology Center, has developed a functioning model of his version of an oil skimmer that pulls oil toward it while remaining stationary. Although the model is currently only about 20 inches long, floating in a kiddy pool and captained by two LEGO men, Lindsey hopes the project will get funding and eventually find a place in the wide effort to clean up the excess oil in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizen oil rig explosion in April. The Daily Illini spoke with Lindsey at his lab to discus his model.

Daily Illini: What are the benefits of this type of oil skimmer?

Tim Lindsey: The nice thing about this is I don’t have to come in direct contact with (the oil). If you watch this thing, the oil will come to it from certain directions … because it creates that laminar flow across the surface.

The other thing I like about this one is you can set it up in an environmentally sensitive area like a marsh or a bayou, or something like that, without doing a lot of disturbance. You could have it pull the oil in from the shore. But again, it’s a one-foot plastic model in a kiddy pool. So what I want to do is build a larger scale prototype, obviously.

DI: Will a full-scale prototype still cost $750,000 as you have previously said?

Lindsey: Yeah, that’s when I thought I was building it from the ground up ­— and it all depends on how big of one you want — but I think for a couple hundred thousand now I could have a functioning prototype and maybe it would do 100 barrels a day. And then we could be out there, and we could be testing it and figuring out how to make a better one.

DI: How was this technology developed?

Lindsey: I initially developed this for use in industrial fluids … Also the fluid they use to de-grease metal before they paint it … I developed this to pull the oil out of those systems, and I always figured you could use it for a spill clean-up too, but I just never had the occasion to. It takes a lot of effort and expense to scale it up, and now with the BP thing there may be an opportunity there.

DI: Is there any residue or remnants of the oil left behind after the process?

Lindsey: There will still be some trace oil coming back in, so that could be a stumbling block for this as well. If you can get the vast majority of the oil out and it goes back in the water, the ocean can deal with a little bit of oil. Microorganisms can get in there and eat it. Oil oozes into the ocean all the time, it just doesn’t ooze in at, what is it, 100,000 barrels a day.

DI: So, no definite bidders or funding yet?

Lindsey: No definite ones yet.

DI: Has this been one of you major projects for the summer, or have you been doing other things?

Lindsey: I’ve got many other projects that are really probably a lot more important than this. We do a lot of different stuff here. I’ve got two different projects with Caterpillar right now. I’m trying to reduce their water usage. We just picked up a project with ComEd up in Chicago to put solar reflectors on 100 homes up there.