I agree with you on the amount of oil the leak is spewing and have argued the same thing in previous posts.
However, the super-skimmer is a ship designed to suck up oily water and separate it into oil and water. It has some capacity which I hope is not as ill-defined as the leak itself, and, in fact should be pretty well defined. I would expect it to be sufficiently well defined that "which gallon" matters. However, I don't know if its performance varies with the percentage oil in the water. I suspect the oiliness of the water (percent oil) is relatively low at the surface, even right near the leak. ________________________________ From: Bill Hooper <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, July 4, 2010 3:52:08 PM Subject: [USMA:48039] Re: What Kind of Gallons? On Jul 4 , at 12:12 PM, John M. Steele wrote: In its article on the giant oil skimmer tanker, the BBC says it can process 21 million gallons of oily waste water per day. ... >Shouldn't the BBC clarify what kind of gallons it is using No, the BBC doesn't need to "clarify" because it doesn't matter I really am not concerned about the way the VERY imprecise measures of the amounts of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico are measured. The numbers are so crude and approximate that the small difference between the British gallon and the American gallon is irrelevant. The British gallon equals 1.2 American gallons. Therefore, if the 21 million figure given is British gallons, the value in American gallons would be 25 million (American) gallons. If the 21 million is for American gallons then the British value would be 18 million. It is widely understood that figures like "21 million gallons" means anything from 10 million to 50 million or worse. The values of 21 million British gallons and 25 American gallons, or 21 million American and 18 million British, ALL fall well within the range "between 10 and 50 million gallons". It really doesn't matter. Bill Hooper 1810 mm tall Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA ========================== SImplification Begins With SI. ==========================
