Flexible barge: Difference between revisions

Spragg Bag is the trademark for a certain type of a large "waterbag" and further described as a flexible fabric barge for the transportation of bulk fresh water.^[1][2]

Terry Spragg of Manhattan Beach, is the inventor of the flexible fabric barge for the transportation of bulk fresh water and is the reason why his invention is referred to as the "Spragg Bag."^[3] His corporation consists of not only himself but engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other technical people. The new waterbag technology has been worked on and perfected over the last twenty years by Spragg and his associates. The first field test of his waterbag was in December 1990. The waterbag was 75 meters long and it contained approximately 3,000 cubic meters of fresh water. It was towed from the Port Angeles harbor in the state of Washington. Another test was done in 1996 with a 100 mile voyage from Port Angeles to Seattle, Washington.^[4] Spragg says that his next goal is to run another test voyage demonstration between Northern and Southern California and a demonstration of the waterbag technology in the Middle East as well as around the world. He claims when two waterbags pass underneath the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time in history the media will let the whole world know about it.^[5][6][7]

The 1995 associated patents (#5,413,065 and #5,488,921) indicate that the inventions relate to a flexible fabric barge or combination of several barges made of a rubber polyeurophane material. The main body portion of each flexible barge is pretty much cylinder in shape and looks like a big blimp or a Boeing 747 jetliner that is almost totally submerged in the ocean.^[8] The bardge can be used by itself or as several connected flexible fabric barges that can be towed through the open ocean under extreme conditions. The patent further explains that the goal of the invention is a reliable and practical water delivery system of fresh drinkable water that could be delivered to dry regions worldwide that have a shortage of potable water.^[1][2]

The patent concept aims at an economical delivery system for fresh water that would be considerably cheaper than desalination plants, ridged sea ships, tanker trucks, conventional barges, aqueducts or pipeline transport. Waterbags are more economical and better for the environment than desalination of the seas and oceans.^[9]

The Spragg Bag is a system of buoyant, flexible, plastic containers linked together with a patented attachment system. It is a type of "fabric water pipeline" when several are strung together for transport of fresh water by tugboat through seas or open oceans to remote locations.^[8] The large waterbags are connected together like boxcars in a "train" fashion to increase the amount of fresh water delivered at a time. The inventor estimates that the waterbags could be as large as 14 meters in diameter and 150 meters in length, holding up to 17,000 cubic meters of fresh water. Theoretically as many as 60 "waterbags" could be connected to one another and towed, although such a test has not been done to date.^[4] Spragg's engineers suggest that the fabric to hold the fresh water and the zipper coupler system is strong enough to be pulled by a 4,300 hp tug.^[10] The "bag technology", which is sometimes referred to as a balloon or bladder, is made up of a vinyl lining inside a stronger material net.^[11]

The basic invention is for the delivery of huge amounts of fresh water (700,000 to 4,500,000 gallons in each bag) at one time in a hostile wind and wave environment typical of oceans and large seas.^[1][3] Since freshwater is lighter than seawater the filled "bladders"^[12] (as they are sometimes referred to as^[13]) float on top, pretty much like an iceburg, with little above the surface and most below the surface.^[1] Fresh water can be taken from rivers just before it discharges into salty seas or oceans, which then would not interfer with salmon spawning.^[8]

The associated coupler and zipper patent describes that to be economically feasible there should be several such flexible barges towed at one time. This string of barges would typically consist of barges in size from 25 to 50 feet in diameter and 200 to 800 feet in length each. The unique characteristic of the Spragg Bag system is not the large volume of water in each bag, but its ability to be able to connect several of the bags together in long trains that allows gigantic volumes of water to be transported through the ocean. The more volume of water that can be delivered per each trip, the better the economics. The waterbag train would be connected with a fabric coupler using large specially designed zippers. The large connecting zipper can be operated manually or by remote control with radio signals. The lead barge of a string of such flexible fabric "waterbags" would have coupled to it by the special zipper system a reinforced fabric nose cone where a tow line is attached. Each "waterbag" is generally filled to 90% capacity which then has a "profile" which transverses flat across the top.^[2]

One San Francisco area reporter writes that waterbag technology would be an economical fresh water delivery to the Monterey Peninsula district and solution to the shortage of fresh water in the area. He reports that the average family of four uses one acre-foot of water a year. This costs over $1000 for delivery using conventional methods, however this same amount of water delivered by Spragg Bags would cost about 30% less.^[6] Another newspaper reporter explains that towing Spragg Waterbags is environmentally friendly and is more economical than carring water in ships or water tanker trucks or even using conventional rigid pipelines.^[8] An article in the July issue of ECONOMIST Magazine in 2008 explains that worldwide there is enough water for all, however most is often in the wrong place at the wrong time and it is just too expensive to transport.^[14]

Waterbag technology offers an easy and inexpensive solution to the problem of today's expensive conventional water transportation. It eliminates the difficulty of transporting water long distances by using the ocean as the means of transport. Waterbags considerably lower the capital costs and operating costs of moving fresh water from place to place. If a train was able to only move one or two box cars at a time, rather than in a train of dozens of boxcars at a time, it would not be very efficient and extremely expensive. Linking waterbags into "trains" of strings of waterbags and moving them through the ocean increases the economics of water transportation making it a viable practical option. ^[8]

The cost to transport water 300 to 800 miles through the ocean, based on deliveries of 5 million gallons per day to 10 million gallons per day, is estimated to be between $350 to $450 per acre foot, depending on the length of the voyage and the amount of water delivered per trip. Increasing the amount of water delivered per day in each waterbag train will help to significantly reduce the cost of the water delivered. Once the reliability of the waterbag delivery system has proven its economics and reliability it will just be a matter of adding more waterbags to the trains, and more trains to the system in order to increase the amount of water delivered to selected locations, while also reducing the cost of the water delivered. Based on the increasing reliability of the waterbag delivery system over time, it should be possible to be able to economically deliver 100,000’s of acre feet per year to many coastal locations around the world.^[8]

According to the inventor of the Spragg bag, the total cost of delivering fresh water down the California coast by his waterbag technology for a distance of 800 miles from British Columbia to Monterey would cost about $966 per acre-foot per year. Keith Spain in a study for a Master Of Arts then shows in an analysis that it would save the residents of the Monterey Peninsula some $1,134 per-acre foot otherwise using a desalination plant. This is a savings of over $19 million per year for the Monterey taxpayers. This number assumes a usage of approximately 17,000 acre-feet per year (17,000 X $1,134 = $19,278,000 savings).^[15]

One application seen is in the Middle East where large quantities of fresh water that are available in the Turkey region could be delivered to other Mediterranean Sea countries that have an extreme shortage of drinkable fresh water, like Israel and Gaza.^[16] Spragg believes that delivering fresh drinking water to water-poor nations can promote world peace.^[17]

Another application is the delivery of fresh water from the state of Washington to dry regions of Southern California.^[10] Other applications are that it:

• could deliver large quantities of stormwater to areas where it could be used for horticulture, agriculture or beautification purposes.

• could deliver large quantities of stormwater and/or recycled water to areas that need more fresh water to offset lower water levels and rising salinity areas.

• could be pre-positioned storage wordwide of large quantities of fresh drinking water for quick delivery after a natural disaster.^[5][18]

Spragg has proposed to deliver water from the Manavgat River in Turkey across the Mediterranean Sea to Israel and the Gaza Strip, which has an extreme shortage of water, which presently is being reviewed by the World Bank.^[16][19]

Spragg has proposed to the Australian government that bulk fresh drinking water using his waterbag technology could be applied to urban water supplies that have a shortage. It would establish an economically sound new industry for bulk fresh water transport. The technology could also be used for the collection of Australia’s factory waste water outputs, storm water, and sewerage for processing and reuse.

Spragg has proposed to the White House the idea of a peace offering in the Middle East by supplying 20 to 30 of his waterbags with fresh water and transport them from Turkey to the Palestinians and Israelis. He says the cost would be somewhere in the area of a penny a gallon for such a project.^[20]

• San Francisco Chronicle, August 6, 1999; Full of Holes, or in the Bag by Michael McCabe, Chronicle Staff Water
• Lawrence Journal-World - April 27, 1996; Giant water bags proposed to quench a dry planet's thirst
• Gleick, Peter H.; Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security; The world's water: the biennial report on freshwater resources, Volume 1998
• Westneat, Danny, The San Diego Union - Tribune, San Diego, Calif.:Apr 28, 1996. p. A-3, He hopes water-bag idea will float. 'Fabric pipeline' could slake thirst worldwide, [1,2 Edition]

• Demonstration of waterbag
• www.waterbag.com