[ale] OT - Have you seen this almost trivial solution to the oil mess?

[Jim Lynch]

Greg Clifton wrote:
> I haven't watched the video, but I suspect that what they are 
> referring to as hay (basically dried bermuda, fescue or some such 
> grass or dried alfalfa for a higher protein feed) was actually wheat 
> straw (or should have been). Wheat straw is hollow like a drinking 
> straw, which would nearly double, or at least greatly increase the 
> surface area (I'm not a mathlete, so I'll leave the calculations for 
> those who are) for the oil to bind to. It is also useless for animal 
> fodder, but popular for landscaping (think hydro seeding or more 
> commonly dry seeding) for moisture retention and erosion prevention 
> while newly sown grass is being established. If I'm correct, the 
> animals and their owners wouldn't suffer so much as the developers and 
> landscapers, but those businesses are rather slow [HUGE 
> understatement] these days.
> GC
They only tested fescue and bermuda, but suggested straw would most 
likely work as well and mentioned we are only a few weeks away from a 
large production of straw.

I suspect that after collection some bright individual would come up 
with a clean way to burn it in an  environmentally friendly way to 
produce electricity.  I recall experiments years ago where they 
introduced water into a furnace burning waste to cause almost complete 
combustion and eliminate contaminants. 

Jim.