WESTMINSTER : Oil Cleanup Device Ready for Shipment

Fifty Southern California Edison engineers, designers and welders have worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts the last 10 days to create a device to help clean up the massive Persian Gulf oil spill.

“We’re excited about it. We’re excited that we’re actually going to be part of the war effort. It seems more imperative that this thing get off the ground,” said welder Dennis Kefalas, who helped create the device, which was demonstrated Thursday at Southern California Edison.

Officials said they hope the device, called ExactAir, will aid in the cleanup of the millions of gallons of crude Kuwaiti oil that were released into the Persian Gulf last month and now threaten Saudi Arabia’s desalination plants.

When suspended from a helicopter, the 600-pound device sprays a white biodegradable powder that makes oil congeal, trapping it at the surface and making it easy to remove. Normally, boats would be used to apply the powder, but mines in the Persian Gulf make that too risky, so helicopters will be used, said Edison spokesman Brian Jobst.

Under conventional methods of vacuuming oil spills, as much water as oil is drawn in. But oil treated with the powder, called Elastol, congeals and can be vacuumed from the surface without drawing in any water, Edison marketing consultant Michael Whyte said.

One pound of Elastol, which is made from the same substance as chewing gum, can treat up to 8,000 gallons of oil, and ExactAir can spray 200 pounds before it needs refilling. The treatment makes cleanup much cheaper as well. It can cost $3,000 a barrel using conventional methods compared to $15 a barrel with Elastol.

The first ExactAir will be sent to Saudi Arabia within 48 hours, and the Saudi government will immediately begin spraying the oil slick.

If the results are good, “they are prepared to take another 10 machines in a very short period of time,” said Jerry Trippe, president of General Technology Applications, the Manassas, Va., company that makes Elastol and is coordinating the project.

“Our objective is to protect those desalination plants,” he said. “The real way to do that from our standpoint is to treat the oil long before it gets there. . . . It changes the whole nature of cleaning up oil.”

More than 20,000 pounds of the substance have already been shipped to Saudi Arabia.

Edison helicopter pilot Mark Kovaletz originally conceived the idea for the machine more than a year ago to blast power-line insulators clean with a sprayed powder. But after seeing a news story about Elastol a few months ago, he adapted the design for fighting oil slicks, he said.