Friday, July 29, 2011

X Prize Oil Challenge Advances

The X Prize Foundation said Thursday that its $1.4 million, Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge is advancing, with competitors in the prize entering the testing phase. The group said that the competition--which is looking for new ways to clean up oil spills--began field testing on July 22nd, at the The National Oil Spill Response Research & Renewable Energy Test Facility in Leonardo, NJ. The X Prize Foundation kicked off its oil cleanup challenge in July of last year, in response to the BP oil spill in the gulf. The prize based challenge is similar to the X Prize Foundation's other prizes, which award a prize to a field of teams best able to meet certain requirements to advance an area of technology. The group said that there are ten finalists testing their oil spill cleanup technologies as part of the testing phase.