Tom Kaye, can you save our Gulf?

[halB]

An open letter to Tom Kaye:

I recently read on huffingtonpost that the estimated pressure of the oil escaping into the gulf is between 100,000 to 200,000 PSI. The article also said that no devices exist to deal with such a pressure.
You have a wealth of knowledge regarding the pressures of fluids. You have done amazing things.
So, I have the following questions, which I think few other people in the world would be able to answer as well as you.

1) Is 100,000 to 200,000 PSI more pressure than mankind can deal with? Just how different is that from a system with 5,000 PSI? Is it 20 times greater, or is it exponentially greater?
2) Could you design a system that could plug the well? Obviously, this is a foolish question because you don't know what the pipe looks like, the terrain, etc. But could you hypothetically design a system to capture that much pressure and then contain it?
3) They seem to be having problems pumping cement in at such a high pressure. Is there anyway to help them with that?
4) Don't you want to save all the dolphins?

Even if you cannot save the gulf, I would still like to know just what this pressure means. I don't even think I'm asking the right questions. Just what does 100,000 PSI mean?

Sincerely,
halB

[cockerpunk]

one would think since we commonly use wells to get oil out that a broken well wouldn't have much higher pressures then a functioning one ...

200 ksi is a lot of pressure. as a benchmark for what kind of pressure that is, 416 Stainless has a tensile strength of about 100 ksi. "aged" 6061 is around 60 ksi.

[nerobro]

I was of the understanding that the pressure at the well head was 18,000 psi. Not 180,000psi. The ambient pressure at that depth is around 2500psi as well.

[Tunaman]

I was of the understanding that the pressure at the well head was 18,000 psi. Not 180,000psi. The ambient pressure at that depth is around 2500psi as well.

That is what I heard too...18000 psi. They dont have a problem with containing the pressures, the problem lies in the oil leaking out AROUND the main well pipe. The main pipe is broken and so is the sea bed around it from what I can gather....

[DevilMan]

One thing I don't get is this... and I know I'm not a rocket surgeon...

Why can't you run a tube... something like a corregated (sp?) pipe down there and just let the oil fill it and gather it at the surface. You don't have to cap it off, and the design of the rig is to the point that you can put a vehicle there that will be geostationary over it to collect.

For those wondering, oil floats on water. So it'll just float up the tube to the top.

I think the "brains" always try to come up with something elaborate. When the red neck in me figures why stop it? Just let it bleed but control where the flow goes.

DM

[Fred]

You have to consider that its a mile underwater, and that there are different currents as you go down. The nature of the failures in the well-head make it impossible to just thread on a new hose.

[Sumthinwicked]

what about dropping a big o slab o metal over it yea know like plate say 10 foot thick 50 x50 ? it would weigh tons and be a solid not movable item ? it would sink in nice and deep in the mud or even 100 by 100 ? whateva enough to cap the well think newspaper over dogpee its gone like if by magic LOL but for real it could work ....if it was heavy enough the oil wouldnt ooze out

[DevilMan]

I'm not talking about screwing on a new hose and I know about the currents and such...

I'm talking about making a frame that is weighted something similar to a circus tent that will have the hole in the top that is large enough to not clog up... Shoot anchors into the sea floor and run cables through the fixture to anchor it down. On top of that tent you put a 10' diameter hole with a 10' diameter pipe or whatever size is fitting that is NOT rigid but is like those inflatable air things that people use for advertising (basically a large diameter cloth tube).... you run that up and have floats along the way up tied to the sides to help keep it in line and pulled taut.

The oil will flow up the tube, put scavenger device on the surface that will separate the oil from the seawater.... BTW, that's pretty easy to do... Not sure about crude oil but you can separate a gallon of gas from water by pouring the gas in bucket then filling that bucket with water. You put a tap at the top that allows run off. The gas will surface and push off through the drain hole. So basically you put a pump from the tube to push it all into a tanker. The tanker has a drain pump that pulls from the BOTTOM of the storage tank. The mix goes in, gets a chance to settle some (this should be put into the tank as softly as possible to keep from stirring it all up) and the drain pump sucks out the water layer on the bottom. As long as the fill pump is faster than the drain pump and there is an initial layer of salt water in the bottom you'll be fine.

You can also attach geostationary buoys and such to the "pipe" to help keep it in place.

The leak around the whole area can be contained by covering the whole area. The stuff I'm talking about using has no adverse issues with the temps and the pressures. You can't crush a steel pipe that has the same pressure on the ID as on the OD. You can't flatten something that has nothing but equalized pressure in it.

For instance... take a garden hose and turn the water on. Water under pressure comes out. Cut the hose in half. NOW try to splice it back together without turning/shutting the water off? Can you do it? Here's how.

Take the cut end and put a barbed fitting on it. Can you do this with the water running? YES IF you don't try to shut the water pressure off. Just let the water flow through the fitting. Make sure the end relief valve is open and put the other end on the barbed fitting. THEN close the relief valve at the end. You can't just stick your finger in the hole and think it'll stop. But if you direct that pressure through an open pipe and get it secured then turn the valve off you are good to go.

Just my .02

And BP if you are listening... I want free gas for life!

DM

You can also use a tube that has say small tubes running the length of it to the top. Inflate those "stays" with water (if there is enough ) to help hold some shape to the tube. It could be spiral wound the length of the tube so when it gets pressurized it pushes it out like a giant cloth wrapped spring. The pressure will not be an issue because the water pressure will equalize at whatever depth it needs to.

[nerobro]

One thing I don't get is this... and I know I'm not a rocket surgeon...

Why can't you run a tube... something like a corregated (sp?) pipe down there and just let the oil fill it and gather it at the surface. You don't have to cap it off, and the design of the rig is to the point that you can put a vehicle there that will be geostationary over it to collect.

For those wondering, oil floats on water. So it'll just float up the tube to the top.

I think the "brains" always try to come up with something elaborate. When the red neck in me figures why stop it? Just let it bleed but control where the flow goes.

DM

This isn't a bad idea. It's been tried several ways. The first was the "dome" they placed over the leaking sections of riser pipe. This filled with methane hydrates and oil flowed out the sides instead. (methane hydrates are one of those funny things that really only exists at sub freezing tempratures and 2500psi)

A light duty pipe to direct the flow sounds like a good idea to me. the engineering on a mile long self supporting pipe would be a little more difficult, however not an imposable task, nor one that should take months to do...

Keep in mind the rig that drilled this wasn't anchored. It used thrusters for station keeping (iirc..)

Oil does float on water, but when you run oil through 5k feet of water, strange things start to happen. First, light fractions and gas dissolve in the water. Just like air, co2, and n2 disolve in water. So the tube you make, may well behave as a fractionating column and may not flow as you expect.

And at this point, there are seeps all over the seabed around this. It's supposed that the well itself has failed, and that means oil will take any available path to the surface, versus just out the drill tube.

There are lots of oil seeps in the bottom of hte ocean as it stands. I recall reading that there's some 16,000 barrels a day of "natural" seeps.

what about dropping a big o slab o metal over it yea know like plate say 10 foot thick 50 x50 ? it would weigh tons and be a solid not movable item ? it would sink in nice and deep in the mud or even 100 by 100 ? whateva enough to cap the well think newspaper over dogpee its gone like if by magic LOL but for real it could work ....if it was heavy enough the oil wouldnt ooze out

I like this. But for fun, calculate the weight of that plate. And then calculate what it will weigh in water. (remember, even if it doesn't float, water still provides boyancy) It wouldn't work... but I like the idea. 18,000psi working on a big plate is going to cause a lot of lifting force. a whole lot of lifting force. like, nine tons per inch of lifting force. Six and a half if you consider the weight of water on it.

Your 50x50 plate, is going to weigh something like 5300 tons, while submerged.

Now there has been a lot of guys who are to smart with not enough real life experience working out there. For instance, when they went to cut the well head off, the cut in such a maner that when the pipe broke, the weight caused the pipe to clamp down on the saw. Any... ANY carpenter would know this happens. Heck, a machinist would see it too.

The relief wells are the key here now. If the integrety of the well is broken under the seafloor (and the seeps indicate it is..) you need to get to the oil down below where the drill pipe is broken.

I think the junk shot and top kills were some really bad ideas...

[DevilMan]

I agree the whole fill with concrete and the concrete box thing... The concrete box would work IF it was large enough. It wasn't. The exhaust hole wasn't large enough and allowed the methane crystals to clog it up.

I'd be willing to bet that the crystals even at 5K feet aren't 10' in size. I know that the rig was not anchored. I'm not suggesting that it be. I'm saying ANCHOR the "tent" to the floor. The idea is to cover a vast area so that the head, the seepage from around the head, the whole thing is contained. I mean how large is a circus tent??? The material would have to be special for the depth and the oil resistance to some extent, but the attachment to the tubes can be easily done by either one long tube or by feeding the bottom one INTO the the inside of the next one up with something like a 10' overlap. it won't be a sealed system per say, but you can "stitch" the parts together by running a line around them through eyelets and then drawing it tight. If you could see in my head you'd know what I mean.

Anyway... That's my idea on it. Again if there are multiple points try and cover as many as possible with one tent and set up another where it's needed. You won't be trying to stop the bleeding. You'll simply be directing the blood flow.

DM

[LK-13]

what about dropping a big o slab o metal over it yea know like plate say 10 foot thick 50 x50 ? it would weigh tons and be a solid not movable item ? it would sink in nice and deep in the mud or even 100 by 100 ? whateva enough to cap the well think newspaper over dogpee its gone like if by magic LOL but for real it could work ....if it was heavy enough the oil wouldnt ooze out

if you have a slab of anything heavy enough to cap the well, the correct shape to sink on target and stay put.

how are you going to lift it to carry it into position?

[AGD]

I am sure the problem is more complicated than just a high pressure pipe that needs a cap. There are a LOT of very smart people working on this. Its not a matter of coming up with good ideas, its dealing with all the other issues.

From what I understand, if you just stuck a cork in the pipe, it could burst somewhere else under the sea floor making it absolutely impossible to fix. I think the relief wells will be the fix in the end.

But since you asked.... I would Install a loose fit funnel over the well head with a pipe to the surface, like the 'tent' structure they already made. Next I would bringing an oil tanker full of fresh water out to the site. Heat the water before pumping it down to the well head where it would be released under the funnel. Fresh water is less dense than salt water and will want to float to the surface creating a siphon action in the pipe and taking the oil with it. The hot water would hopefully prevent the hydrates from forming crystals and clogging the tube. The water and oil could then be separated at the surface.

As bad as the spill is, remember that its only about double what leaks into the oceans naturally (albeit in one place).

AGD

[LK-13]

One thing I don't get is this... and I know I'm not a rocket surgeon...

Why can't you run a tube... something like a corregated (sp?) pipe down there and just let the oil fill it and gather it at the surface. You don't have to cap it off, and the design of the rig is to the point that you can put a vehicle there that will be geostationary over it to collect.

For those wondering, oil floats on water. So it'll just float up the tube to the top.

I think the "brains" always try to come up with something elaborate. When the red neck in me figures why stop it? Just let it bleed but control where the flow goes.

DM

you ever manned a fire hose?
ever see what happens at full pressure (couple hundred psi i think) if you let go of it or only have one small person on the line?

but lets pretend you have a pipe that will capture all the venting oil and other compounds,
it will expand as the oil and compounds does because the pressure in shallow water is much lower than it is at depth... oh it's venting at 18,000psi even though the water is pushing back at 2500psi so that is a total of 20,500psi that oil would be venting at should the well be at sea level ambient pressure.
so you take one cubic foot of oil gunk at 20,500psi and drop the ambient pressure to 14.75psi it's going to expand a lot!

but let's just pretend you can capture it no problem...

What are you going to put it in?
an oil well in normal operation is metered and regulated to supply the oil a a determined rate.
a rate that the shipping industry and or pipe lines can handle.

they can't handle something like this that is out of control.
there is just no vessels to put the oil in.

but one thing that really bothers me...
the last most recent no crap version of the truth from BP says that the well has been venting 100,000 barrels of oil a day...
so that is 1 Million barrels in 10 days and 1 Billion after 100 days.
so the only stat I could find for USA's oil use is from 2007 but close enough i guess...
at 20,680,000 bbl/day or rounded up to 21 Million Barrels per day,
so 21 x 365= 7665 Million barrels per year or 77 Billion barrels per year once rounded off to make life easier...
USA uses 77 Billion barrels of oil per year.
this well is venting oil at close to 4 Billion barrels a year,

THIS ONE WELL IS VENTING AT A RATE OF NEARLY 4 BILLION BARRELS A YEAR...

I'll say that one more time,
this lone,
single,
one well is venting nearly 4 Billion barrels a year...

so if one well can produce that much, WHAT OIL SHORTAGE!?!

My father tells me that gas in the 60's used to cost $0.25 per IMPERIAL Gallon (not the smaller US gallon)
today gas is $0.96 per Liter or $3.84 per IMP Gallon.
But if one well can produce 4 of the 77 billion barrels of oil the USA uses in one year, how much oil could be produced by the hundreds or thousands of wells there are through out North America?
this looks to me like Oil Companies Artificially Inflating the Price of Oil by Claiming there is a Shortage that Does Not Exist!

WE HAVE ALL SEEN HOW HONEST AND FOURTH RIGHT BP HAS BEEN...

[DevilMan]

Yes I have dealt with a fire hose... on more than one occasion and I'm am well aware of what the force is from. You must not be thinking clearly.

1. you can't compress a liquid.

The oil that is coming from the sea floor is in and of itself coming out for 2 reasons. 1 is the fact that it is LESS DENSE than the surrounding water and 2. it is under pressure from the mantle/rock/dirt/etc that is pushing down on the pocket of oil.

You also fail to understand or acknowledge how SOME not all oil rigs work. SOME of them pump water down into the cavity of oil with one line and fill in the void with water, and that pushes the oil up the pipe to the surface. I don't think that is the case here, but either way the pipes are not connected to the best of my knowledge. So basically it's "bleeding" out due to pressure/buoyancy.

You are bypassing these simple facts. The OIL does NOT expand from 1 gallon at the sea floor to 50 gallons at the surface. Some of the METHANE and CO2 and other compressed/cooled/solidified gases DO. Those are what caused the initial problem.

You seem to be thinking that my idea is a sealed system that is to be pressurized. You are wrong. My idea is simply providing a channel for the oil to "float" up in. A prime example of what I am trying to get at is something along these lines....

Attach one of these... ~> http://products.construction.com/Man...utes-NST5685-P
or these ~>

http://www.superchute.com/new/Chutes/canvas.html

or these ~>

http://www.superchute.com/new/Chutes/tremie.html

My idea can deal with the pressures, because they are all in equilibrium. The pressure in the "spring" of the tube will match with the pressure of the surrounding water. The oil coming up the tube will be "floating" up at it's own rate. do you think that the oil is GUSHING from the surface of the sea? NO. It's simply floating up through the thermoclines.

The gases and such as they come up they do expand at a volatile rate. Hence the disaster to begin with. HOWEVER. If you do not restrict that expansion you don't have an explosion. Are you aware of how much air is in your lungs when you are 100' below the surface? Do you know that if you hold your breath or are unable to exhale you WILL EXPLODE due to expansion due to lack of pressure? That is why you must exhale on the way up. If you have a relief valve ie. NOT in a restricted space you don't have an issue. If the gases expand and increase the speed they will pass the oil that is in the tube and beat it to the surface. You could possibly put some diffusers in the tube along the way to try and slow it down, but anything that is going to slow down a gas is going to all but stop a gooey sticky liquid. If those gas bubbles come to the surface in open atmosphere they are harmless. Say if you had the system in place... the oil would surface and you could build a "pool" around the top. The top of the pool would be OIL and below that seawater. Any gas that came up would simply pop on the surface and diffuse into the atmosphere. You put a skimmer on the pool... Something along the lines of a large set of pontoons that the tube comes up into the middle of. A skimmer is set in it to pull the oil off of the top. There is no pressure, there is no containment, there is no risk of a pressure build up.

*looking for actual pics to help my idea out here kills my train of thought*

DM

[DevilMan]

Also it has been known that it's not about the supply it's about the politics. It's not just the companies. There have been numerous times that stateside oil has been CHEAPER than imported oil, and yet the stuff still gets bought and imported. One reason is because the supply line due to the cost being high before never really solidified into a high volume line. So when the price went up overseas, the local stuff couldn't fill the demand. So instead of buying local it was still bought from overseas and just stuck on at the pump. And face it... the company don't care where they get the oil from because no matter what they'll make a profit from it. They know that no matter what we'll still fill up the car because we have no choice.

Don't hate just the oil companies. It's far more entangled than just that. You know some of those inventions that can crack water or turn sunlight into power or simplify something and make it LESS oil dependent that gets bought up by an "investor" just to get put on ice in the back of some storage room never to see the light of day again... Well the company got what they wanted, the guy got rich, though his invention never made the world a safer, happier, better place. But who the hell cares... He can have all he wants now..

Everyone wants to hate the oil companies? Fine then put up solar and wind and hydro plants.... then the greenies and crap don't want that done because it messes up mother nature... fine don't want to use as much energy? One sure way is to have less people. I mean I've yet to see a dog turn on a light to read the paper, take a shower, cook dinner, etc... Want fewer people? Legalize abortion, let those that wanna die DIE, put those on death row to death, etc... Oh wait... that violates some law I'm sure... can't do that. Everyone should do what they want. Well guess what. ENERGY/MATTER CAN NOT BE CREATED NOR DESTROYED.. IT CAN ONLY CHANGE FORMS. So at some point in time. Something has to give. Don't want people on death row put to death? Then you are going to have crowded prisons... Have crowded prisons, gonna have to have more guards... more guards??? More taxes... More taxes??? OH WAIT!!!!! DAMN !!! IT DOES REALLY AFFECT YOU DON"T IT???

Yes I got on a tangent. The point is this. It's not just big oil. It's you, me and everyone else that wants to stick their nose in and tell everyone how to live and what they should do. If you want to be pissed at the oil companies.. Put up solar/wind/hydro plants on your property. If you want to support one thing you got to be ready for the other end of it.

If you want to drill for oil... you gotta expect at some point in time it's gonna leak.

And yet again I'm reminded about how all these people want to ban CO2 because it's a GREENHOUSE GAS... You do know what you exhale right? You do know that greenhouse or not, you gotta exhale. So what? Is it going to become illegal to breathe? They want to tear down all the cars and go electric. Do you know where the electricity comes from? The socket right???? What about this lake ~> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

It's SAFER now, but it's still off gassing HOW MUCH CO2 PER DAY??? And instead of catching and collecting it it's just off gassed into the atmosphere. What? Is the solution to bottle it and bury it in the ground?

blah blah... this got awful long didn't it??? ahhhh I should get some sleep.

DM