With all the genius on this site I thought that a "Solutions Thread" may be appropriate. The BP, gulf spill will no doubt effect all of us. What if: a bell shaped housing is suspended over the burst pipe and the oil is pumped up though a line? If that was was the original idea which failed because of icing, why not use an iron housing which can be heated? I don't propose to be a genius, but some of you on here may very well be. What say you?
They tried something similar to your idea with that 3 story structure that froze up. This is a complex problem. Pressures and temperatures at such depth, more than oil coming up,etc. I am sure they have some smart folks working on this.
Why is this posted on the 2010 forum? It sounds like you are dissing the pre-2010 owners? I'm sure there are some pretty smart people there too.
GREAT GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!! NEW FORUM. We got alot of smart peeps here. Exactly my thoughts also. I think the previous bell shaped device iced up because the ports were to small. Lets try a "bell" about 20 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. Like a 4 sided soup can with one end open. Steel. 4 sided. Yeah I know...thats big. So what. We float Drilling Rigs out there all the time and there immense. Each side of the bell would have around 15-20 hose valves about 4 inches in diam. We drop the bell over the entire bov assy. Don't hook it to anything. Don't touch that existing assy. I'm surprised there trying to attach things to it. If you break that assy off your done. Drop a house over the top of the whole bov assembly. Steel. Bring it out on a barge. Put 4 crane barges one on each corner so you will have some adjustability to position it as you drop it. You cannot stop that pressure at that depth. The best you can do is trick it. I'ver heard pressure's of 70,000 psi there. Hook up the hoses to the valves to pumping barges (pb) in between the crane barges. You install 6000 feet of hose length. The pb stands off and begins pumping seawater as the bell reaches deep water. You would need 15 pumps capable to pump at a high rate with 4 inch intakes on each of the 4 barges. Pumps powered by diesel gens on the barge. Your pumping sea water as it lowers to the oil leak. Get it flowing. Ice crystals may not form if the pump rate is high and strong enough volume wise. Your over the BOV and on the ground and your hopefully pumping oil and a bit of sea water.The pb's are far away from the crane barges. The crane barges release and go away. Hose length to the pb's is more than than 6000 ft. Not a problem. Special hoses with easy interlocks widely available. Attach 100 foot sections at a time to deal with hose weight using interlocks like fire truck hoses use. The pb at this point pumps oil into smaller oil tankers that move in behind the pb's. The crane barges vacate. A tanker on each hpb. Tankers move in and out to support the pb constantly until relief well's drilled. If we have to pump oil into the gulf while a new tanker moves in so be it. A drop in the bucket to what we have now. Oh and before any of this happens Obama makes this a National Emergency and kick BP's nice person off this project. At this point I'd like to seize BP's US assets as they seem unwilling to write checks. James Carville was right. Put the AG on them for willful negligence. Get the ARMY COE's in there. They can and will commandeer anything they need to fulfill there mission in a state of NE. Bring in some aircraft carriers and some destroyers and make a wagon train around ground zero 1 mile off station. Use this wagon train to stop wave action to calm the barge area and use the carriers as floating machine shops and heli supply landing strips. Get freakin' serious please. Those welders in LA could build this thing in 5 days. Put 1500 shipwrights on it. USA please write the freakin' checks now please and fight it out with BP later. They build off shore rigs there. This could be installed in 2 weeks. Its not highly technical. Try something please!!! Build something. Try something. Anything. Get freakin serious here. Does oil have to wash up on the Hampton's Beach's for the gov't to start freaking out? Does it have to be a hole that a million illegal aliens are running through an hour to get the gov't to do something? This is alot worse. If we wait till the relief well's are drilled in what September here's the best part THEY ARE NOT GARANTEED TO FIX IT and don't work the Gulf will be dead. I imagine even if they work by then the damage will be done. All sea life destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico. Thats like a Nuclear Bomb. And just as devastating financially. Declare NE and do something.
Hi All, The experiences with the top-caps is that a bell shaped structure would need to be tall enough that where it necks down is at a warm temperature. So, we are talking something the same size as the Sears (now Willis) Tower, for a simple bell shaped design. One problem with the open collection concept (open ended bell) is that you cannot stop the flow. If you turn off the collection valve, the oil just gushes out from underneath the bell. Once expanded and mixed with high pressure sea water, the methane is a big problem, apparently. They were thinking about flowing methanol into the flow to avoid hydrate formation, but that is an awful lot of costly consumable. Any kinda of top-cap , to be feasible, will need thermal insulation and a source of heat to reheat the flow as it is necked down. The issue to be engineered then is to calculate the amount of sea water intake to know how much thermal power is needed. If one thinks about it, that is a tricky problem, as everything is on the end of a 1 mile long tether. One can envision air being pumped down into the neck of the cap, and passed with the flow through a grid of platimum wires. The air/methane mixture would react in the presense of platinum, keeping the mixture warm where it necks down into the riser pipe. The control would then be the amount of air injected. The device might also have some sort or controlled gas relief valve, and gaseous/liquidous seperation capability. This way, only oil/seawater would travel into the riser pipe. It really is a shame they did not employ a bunch of engineers to figure this out ahead of time, before they started deep water drilling. Or even permitted to do deep water drilling. One might also blame the les-afaire (sp?) attitude brough on by the Reagan philosophy for this oversight as well. The more history plays out, the more we know Jimmy Carter was right. When are we going to see those solar panels back on the White House?
Actually it is a clever intelligence test to find those people who have or currently own all three generations of Prius. Sad to say, I skipped the NHW20 so I'll have to decline posting a technical solution in this thread but will continue my technical notes in "Drill Baby, Drill - Opps." In reality, this thread probably belongs in another forum since it includes no ZVW30 content. In the meanwhile, I can offer an electropolitcal note. What we do is drive the price of BP stock low enough that a 'take-over' firm, say Attila Inc. or Cerberus, can buy BP. They do this by getting investment bankers to guarantee the purchase price plus their commission by putting the value of BP up as collateral (interesting loan, using as collateral property not yet owned.) Having bought BP and pocketed the commission, Attila Inc. or Cerberus, saddles BP with the massive loan to payoff. To payoff the loan, they sell every BP production asset to anyone for whatever price they can get. Then they declare bankruptcy and walk away and the investment bankers apply for TARP funds. It is called crony capitalism. Bob Wilson
Thanks. I qualify. Here are my thoughts on the solution. 1) Any solution has to have the fabrication, transport, deployment, and sustainment details worked out as much as the "front end" details. This takes very deep knowledge of a very large group of experience folks. The solution will never be the result of a "one person" idea. 2) All engineering solutions require that all the numbers and calculations be performed to see if the approach is viable. Until this thread starts to include these calculations, it's just a fun imagination exercise. 3) The relief well is the critical step. Imagine the razor blade of pressure these crews are under. Got to do it super fast, but need to go slow enough to ensure success.
Bite your tongue. Environmentalists who pushed for drilling so far beyond the shoreline where depth really complicates logistics is another piece to this unfortunate puzzle.
As I have tried to explain in other posts, the pressure on the seabed, in 5,000 ft of water, is around 15 MPa or 15 mega Pascals. That particular exploration well they have thrown out operating pressures of >45 MPa The water temperature at that depth can vary between +1 to +6 C. The stuff gushing out the BOP stack is a combination of crude oil, methane gas, mud, sand, and water The combination of depth, pressure, and temperature means that the methane can reliably form methane clathrate, sort of like a Slushee, and gum up any attempt to directly capture and pump the mixture
Hi Jayman, Thanks for weighing in. You know far more about oil compounds than I ever will and I gladly concede that point....but if so far fetched how come they attempted a variation of my theme already? I'm not saying I'm on to something here not a all....but I am saying my version or something...anything like it would take less than 5 Million dollars to attempt. Its a low tech effort for sure. A mere tiny drop in the bucket on this final bill. Can you think of a way to capture oil at this depth? Please? Apparently Obama is out of patience too as today he annouced he wants to see BP's next effort on his desk no later than business end tomorrow. Thank freaking god.... And he's putting together a relief package. Wasted time. Pay out the money people need to survive now. Bill BP later. Don't waste anytime on this feel good package. What good is a $$$ package if entire species of fish are destroyed. We down here on the end of this oil firehose are desperate for any kind of mechanical effort. I live about 3 miles from the Gulf. Its the lifeblood of this area and Florida for sure. Without pretty gulf waves and tourism its just a very hot ghetto down here. When CNN announces tarballs rolling up on Clearwater Beaches we are done. To just sit an wait till relief wells are drilled is insanity. Because there's no garantee they will work. The nation will be calling for BP's blood by then. And too late as the gulf will be irretrieveably damaged.
Beats me, except perhaps it was a very public thing to "prove" they were doing something. You know, a horse and pony show When I heard they were doing that, my first thought was "Wth?!" Keep in mind the fluids/gasses coming out of that reservoir are almost HOT. What happens when you take a hot, high pressure gas or liquid, and allow it to "liberate" into a comparatively "low" pressure and low temp environment? It would be surprising if the methane did NOT turn into a Slushee But for the "optics" the stunt was comparatively cheap and did buy BP a week or so I think I may have already covered this in one of the other threads What was needed was a fleet of specifically-designed ROV's to immediately cut and fit a new tree assembly to the damaged BOP. To prevent blowing the new tree assembly off due to the pressure of the escaping fluids and gasses, relief valving would have to allow the fluids/gasses to keep venting until everything was buttoned down tight Keep in mind the pressure at that depth is around 15 MPa, or around 2,200 psi. The well was estimated to be around 45 MPa, or around 6,500 psi More than likely, any temporary stack fitted atop the damaged BOP would need shoring/weighting/anchoring to ensure it can't be blown off. You can't depend on a few bolts Once you were sure the replacement stack was secure, gradually close the relief valves and then turn that well into a production well. It would be iffy to try to close the well, as the casing may well be damaged. Keep in mind they were attempting the cementing process when the blowout happened. Very likely if a replacement stack is simply valved off, the fluids and gasses will start escaping from the damaged casing Those out there who are "real" engineers are pretty much out of the loop on this cluster f***. First and foremost, BP is interested in the "optics" of any "solution." Eg, does putting in extra safety measures mean ADMITTING there could be a problem? The bean counters are still concerned about the "cost" of any "solution." Like any beancounter, they fail to see the long-term impact. All that counts is the Quarterly statement, not what it will cost 5 years down the road Whoop-de-doo Correct, there is no guarantee. I'd give it 50/50 odds at best. They will need enough stand-off distance and horizontal drill-in to avoid any new fractures potentially opened up by the blowout. With the relief well drilled successfully, they can try to "kill" the well. The theory being you go down far enough to avoid the potentially damaged casing, and cut it off there I'm still surprised that hasn't already happened over the mess they have made with the Alaska pipeline, and numerous safety/health infractions on refineries operated in the US Though poor ole Hayward is whining "I want my life back" Go and stick your wiener out often enough, don't be surprised if somebody doesn't chop it off
