Like many Louisianans, Mark Gabriel and Erik Durr watched news coverage of the oil spill and wondered what they could do.
And then they got up and did it.
Gabriel, an industrial engineering graduate student, and Durr, a recent University alumnus, built an oil skimmer designed specifically to clean up oil in the marshes without damaging them and started a company called Wetland Skimmers to produce and market the technology.
“We asked, ‘What are they doing and not doing [to clean up the oil]?’ Cleaning the marsh. They were using Shop-Vacs and paper towels,” Gabriel said.
The skimmer, nicknamed the “Marsh Mop,” uses an eight-horsepower engine to power two large belt skimmers that act both as cleaning mechanisms and propulsion, Gabriel said.
“We went through a lot of ideas, a lot of prototypes, and the idea just kind of came to us,” Durr said.
The Marsh Mop has the ability to pump out amounts exceeding 300 gallons per minute in tests, according to a Wetland Skimmers news release. But because of strict access standards to the oil spill sites, Wetland Skimmers has not been able to put its machine into action where it’s needed most, Gabriel said.
Normal skimmers are tied behind a boat and dragged along an area to clean up oil, which can tear up marsh grass, Gabriel said.
“Our skimmer just pushes down the grass and goes right over it while cleaning up the oil,” Gabriel said.
Wetland Skimmers is based out of the University’s Louisiana Business and Technology Center and is a tenant of the small business incubator, which provides services, management assistance, business plans and contacts for small business startups, said LBTC Executive Director Charles D’Agostino.
“[Wetland Skimmers] shows the creativity of young entrepreneurs — that they saw a problem and found a solution,” D’Agostino said.
Though oil spill clean-up efforts are still ongoing, Wetland Skimmers has yet to receive any orders of its Marsh Mop, Gabriel said.
“I just got an e-mail from BP five days ago saying ‘Thanks for your suggestion,'” Gabriel said.
But that hasn’t stopped Wetland Skimmers from finding a use for its skimmer.
“We’re going to try to make it into something like an ATV that doesn’t destroy the marsh,” Gabriel said.
The skimmer, which can hold three passengers, would be ideal for people who want to go out on the marsh but don’t want to use a loud airboat or a boat that would tear up the marsh, Gabriel said.
“We’ve gotten a lot of interest we didn’t expect, especially from duck hunters,” Gabriel said.
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Contact Frederick Holl at [email protected]