GULF OIL - A PLUMBING PROBLEM?

GULF OIL - A PLUMBING PROBLEM?

Tom Dennen

“Depends on how you look at it,” says inventor Jack Hayes.

Mentioned three different times in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, the Mensa member is not as pretty as Long Island girl genius Alia Sabur, a 21-year-old engineering prodigy who, according to the Washington Post, hatched a plan to solve the, Gulf oil spill, “but,” he says, “she’s on the right track”.

And what’s the right track?

Hayes agrees with Sabur, saying “it’s a simple plumbing problem. Sabur’s idea is fundamentally sound. Repair the pipe, don’t try to cap it, you can see that does not work.

Inflate another custom-built, mile-long pipe (inner tubes might be awkward) insert one end a few yards – whatever the necessary length - down inside the leaking pipe and inflate it, allowing the leak to carry on flowing, but flowing up to surface tankers.”

Hayes’ team has contacted a Rawl Plug engineering team to look at the problem using existing technology.

“Rawl Plug,” says Hayes, “is a British company concerned about the ‘Gulf problem’, who agreed on Friday that their patented engineering concept “might work” if applied to the Gulf Oil ‘plumbing problem’.

(Rawl Plugs are expandable plugs which are inserted into holes drilled into thick steel, concrete or masonite surfaces and then mechanically expanded inside the holes, creating fixed holding points).

Hayes says the Rawl team has been working on the stress math, surface friction coefficients and other engineering complexities over the weekend.

“We should hear from them Monday, 7 June - tomorrow sometime.”

(More on this in the pipeline).