A PLUCKY inventor believes he has come up with a solution that could limit damage caused by oil spills on our oceans.
William Lloyd has pumped £350,000 of his own money into creating a machine designed to clean up oil from the surface of the sea.
If it works it could be used in disasters similar to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
After spending more than 20 years on the project the 72-year-old tested out his contraption on the Marine Lake on Tuesday. Although it needs a few tweaks, William was pleased with the machine’s first showing.
He said: “It looks well to be honest, it’s just a matter now of tweaking these little things out and we should be able to give a really good demonstration.
“She’s just sitting maybe six or seven inches too high in the water and because she’s sitting so high she’s likely to sway side-to-side.”
Explaining how it works, William said: “What I have designed is an oil skimmer, it’s designed to lift the pollution off the surface of the sea and the pollution comes on board.”
Oil or sewage then flows down a sloping deck to be carried into a container through pipes. The only moving part of the machine is a front blade, which skims the water’s surface, picking up the pollutant.
The 20 foot by eight foot product tried out on the lake is one of five that can be attached to a boat to float on water. Having spent years working on the model, William is convinced there is nothing else to match his design.
The grandad said: “There is nothing on the world market that will do what my product will do, the first act starts here. I’ve done so much studying into this.”
Last April, the BP oil spill off the Louisiana coast wreaked havoc on local wildlife and devastated the area’s fishing industry.
Filling the burst pipe with golf balls was one of the suggestions to stop oil leaking into the sea, and William thinks if there was any rival to his design he would have seen it in action in Gulf’s waters.
This is not the former taxi company owner’s first invention.
William, of Blandford Close, has enjoyed success before, and once equipped a plane used by the Queen with his own telemetry system.
Having gained the Great Britain patent in July, he has applied for the European patent on his machine.
Interest has been expressed in it, however no-one would fund his designs until they saw a finished version.