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Drilling For Oil With Megawatt Lasers
Deglr6328 writes: "The U.S. Department of Energy's Fossil Energy site has a story about using lasers to drill through rock at 10 to 100 times as fast as conventional rock boring technologies. One of the lasers tested was the 2.2 megawatt M.I.R.A.C.L., which was originally designed in 1985 for the star wars program. A cool video clip of its test firing can be found at the GTI page here. It looks like we'll be stuck with fossil fuels like oil and natural gas for some time, so we might as well do it James Bond style!" Sounds more like Real Genius style to me. Who brought the popcorn?
When I worked in the offshore oilfields before I became a programmer (don't ask) they used "mud" to fill and seal the hole behind the bit. This prevented natural gas from flowing out of the hole if a pocket was encountered. The "mud" was circulated with pumps and constantly weighed to ensure that the proper density was maintained and the "mud" was not becoming saturated with gas. If a giant pocket of gas were to escape from the well (the dreaded blowout), the ensuing gas bubbles would leave the floating drilling ship and it's attendant work and crew boats in low-density, gas-permeated water (virtually hanging in the air). In conditions like this they would quickly sink a few hundred meters to sea floor. Not a pretty scenario. Have they since developed mud-free drilling techiniques?
Put simply, a laser works by evaporating rock, or Silicon. This forms SO2 and SO and SO3, the Silicon Oxides, as well as many other noxious gases. The simple fact is that the SOX's have been shown to be hundreds of times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and they also destroy Ozone, O3, much more effectively than common or garden chlorofluerocarbons ever did. Vapourised rock is a dangerous thing indeed.
I am sure that this system could be effective though, and make things cheaper and faster for the multinationals, which is a good thing for all of us. I just hope that they take into account the potential pitfalls, perhaps by planting 100 trees every time they use the laser drill, a proven way of renewing the environment.
Corporations are usually quite amenable to this sort of idea.
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The fires at the end of the Gulf War were caused by explosives being sent off at the top of the well, then the pressurized oil and gas went through the explosion and that caused a self fueling fire. The oil deep underground wasn't on fire, nor was the gas. The well fires were all put out by those boys from Texas that have been doing that kind of thing since the 50s. So rent John Wayne in the Hellfighters and see how it's done, the Texas firm that does that...Halliburton I think it is, were technical advisors on the John Wayne film.
...this is where they got the idea for the Death Star?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Some good, general information on [Lake Vostok].
Tidbits:
It's way the hell under the antarctic icecap.
It's been sealed off from the rest of earth for a helluva long time.
It's probably got uniquely-evolved microbes and stuff.
It's *really* *fucking* *cold* in that part of the Antarctic: record low of -88C (-127F).
The lake is about the size of Lake Ontario, or the island of Corsica.
Scientists are, for once, being a bit sensible: they could have tapped the lake by now, but they first want to make sure they don't contanimate it.
However, it seems they haven't thought about whether it might contanimate us...
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Much of the drilling occurs in remote Russia,
remote western US, offshore, where trucking in
high density energy sources is difficult.
Conventional gasoline and rotary drills are easier.
Almost no one drills straight down anyone.
Holes bend outward from a drilling platform, snake
along curved salt interfaces, go horizontal to
maximize the number porous cracks, and so on.
I wonder how easy it is to bend laser holes?
I shall use a giant "L-a-s-e-r" to drill through the surface of the Earth, extract crude oil, distribute it to an unsuspecting population, and slowly destroy the environment!!
Uhm, that's already been done...
Throw me a fricken bone here, I've been frozen for 30 years...
The laser wouldn't, of course, but how do you keep debris from falling down into the whole you just (somewhat violently) made?
It doesn't have to be that violent. Properly done, the laser could slowly burn its way through to the lake, evaporating stuff instead of pulverising it. And permafrost is less likely to collapse, so all would be well.
Of course, if it can be done on Lake Vostok, it can be done on Europa.
Perhaps, but they would also be pretty much unfocused (though possibly directed) energy.
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No, you need oxygen molecules (O2) which there wont be much of down in the hole..In an inert atmosphere you can boil gasoline safely
..........FULL STOP.
No matter how insultingly patronizing you are in your (quite correct) explaination of the science behind it (and your subsequent replies I might add)...
It's still freaking hilarious to read about people shooting high powered lasers at volatile, combustable petro-chemicals!
You're right... cutting through rock with a big piece of hot metal that (probably) generates sparks is probably just as risky as a laser... but it's not NEARLY as funny!
- StaticLimit
They use them as lasers because they make very powerful lasers. Multi-Megawatt lasers are hard to make without going to using the chemical energy in atoms. Just pumping with electricity is very efficient but not that powerfull.
The reaction is combustion rather that detonation. The lasers are designed like small rocket engines. Deuterium is used because the wavelength produced is at a point where air is transparent to IR radiation. Hydrogen Fluride lasers run at a wavelength where air is rather opaque.
I actually run these things all the time for my graduate research. Much fun. The small 100 watt HF laser in our lab can burn bricks causing the formation of glass on the surface. Quite cool.
Robert Wright
The laser melts the rock, some of which then cools to form a ceramic pipe (RTFA). You make the the fiber optic cable with a sheath that you pump water through. This clears out extra debris and makes a lubricant to slide the cable through. With a flexible cable, turning a corner is just a matter of pumping more water to one side than the other. This will reduce resistance on the side with more water and make the cable bend in that direction. Talk to some of the guys who use newer equipment to lay fiber optics without digging a trench.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
An good oxygenating source for combustion is free 02, not oxygen bonded strongly to other atoms such as silicon and hydrogen.
Only a comparativly few elements are reactive enough to remove oxygen from compounds such as water. You will never find these in a borehole. Only their stable oxides.
Arrrrggg!!! Fire needs oxygen.
Or an oxidising agent, usually elemental oxygen or an unstable oxygen containing compound (N.B. such compounds are not going to be present in rocks, being unstable they don't last that long) failing that a halogen will do.
If it's heated above ignition point, it'll start burning the instant it leaks to the surface.
You don't think they might do something like feed the fibre down some kind of gas tight wellhead?
Also, there's quite a bit of subterranean oxygen. Most of it is just temporarily combined with hydrogen. I'm sure the laser does its bit to break some of those bonds along the way.
Water is a rather stable compound, also even if your laser does turn water into free radicals how is this magically going to cause a huge amount of combustion. More likely you will start with methane & water and wind up with methane & water, contaminated with a small amount of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The only element outside groups one and two which can use water as an oxidising agent is Al.
Either you have to put the laser down the hole, or you have to have a clear optical path between the laser and the cutting face.
Not a problem I have a laser sat on the wall here which has a clear optical path to somewhere several km away, certainly not a straight line path. It's simply an engineering problem of making a suitable fibre bundle.
So a scenario would look like this. They start drilling, encounter a large rock layer or salt dome. After examing the geological information, decide that they have to drill through this layer or dome. They pull in the laser, fire it for a few minutes to bore most of the way through, then let the regular drilling systems take over to lay pipe and finish the job
Or more usefully fit the conventional drill with an optical fibre, so they do not need to go to the time and expense of pulling the whole thing out.
Ok, I can see the potential for popcorn-making, but... while I like butter on my popcorn, petroleum somehow is just not the same thing.
ps: I loved the quote. :-)
(8-DCS)
-Omar
Tee hee...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Anyone notice the number of kills painted on the side of the laser in the pic off the page?
Looks like five planes, a missile and two other things I can't make out.
Feng.
--- if y cn rd ths y cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmmng!
Another potential advantage that has been discussed in using laser drilling techniques is the "analysis on the run" that could be conducted while drilling. Because laser vaporizes the formation, and anything it contains (i.e., hazardous contaminants), this drill could be used in front of a gas chromatograph/mass spectroscopy apparatus to analyze the stream of drill waste as the laser advances.
This technique is probably only useful for shallow, high risk drilling operations. The cost of deploying this machine, not to mention maintaining it, are so far off the scale for oil drilling that it is rediculous. No oil company will spend the kind of money it would take to run this drill when conventional drilling techniques have become more cost-efficient, and more precise in directing the borehole.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
No, he just posed one other alternative. Try to come up with some other ones that are viable and whose economic policies didn't pan out.
Our reliance on fossil fuels is not a political choice, it's an economic one. Your uncle mort doesn't drive that giant cadillac to bingo every night because the US Congress told him to waste our fossil fuels; he did it because it's to his economic advantage to get somewhere moderately cheap. Now maybe you might consider a free market economy the ultimate political choice, but then what alternative do we have to that, centrally controlled distrobution of resources i.e. Soviet Union?
Your environmentalist views are all fine and dandy, but I prefer substance not rhetoric. Wind power is _not_ a suitable alternative to coal/gas. Europeans have favorable wheather patterns for wind generators and they still can only make a small percentage change in their energy output.
I support Nuclear power, tidal/fusion power research, solar cell research, and taxing gasoline more heavily. These are some real energy alternatives with substance and promise for our future.
RevT
This laser has only fired 150 times, for a grand total of 50 minutes over its lifespan, and has a "70 seconds maximum lase duration." I'm pretty sure drilling that far down for oil will take more than 70 seconds, and quite probably a single oil well will take longer to drill for than the entire previous experience of the example laser.
Does anyone get the feeling they're getting a little overexcited? Its one thing to create a megawatt class laser in a warehouse for short duration, mostly experimental use... Its entirely another to create one that can survive a hostile environment such as a desert or sea based drilling platform and operate continuously for days at a time. I'm gonna guess technology to make this successfull is still at least a decade out.
If it's heated above ignition point, it'll start burning the instant it leaks to the surface.
Also, there's quite a bit of subterranean oxygen. Most of it is just temporarily combined with hydrogen. I'm sure the laser does its bit to break some of those bonds along the way.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Sure, the new drilling technology is cool, and its engineers are to be commended. But but the tree-hugging lefty in me feels obliged to point out that our reliance on fossil fuels isn't so much an inevitability as it is a political choice we have made.
Take, for example, the recent actions of the German government to encourage wind power. Due to a plan initiated ten years ago, the state of Schleswig-Holstein now generates about 19 percent of electricity from wind, and nationwide the wind industry employs about 15,000 people.
The first way to lose a political argument is to agree with those who say "this is the only way to do it." There's always another way to do it (see also: Perl); very often, there's a better way to do it, too.
Do domain names matter?
Tunnels, though, might be more promising. Using this as part of a hard-rock tunnel boring machine might work. Those things are big enough to incorporate a big laser, and they're operated close to the cutting face. Maybe the New York City Water Tunnel #3 project, underway since the 1970s and scheduled for completion in 2020, could be speeded up.
This must be the single least insightfull correction I've ever read. At least, when you correct someone, make your correction right... Or do you believe in alchemy?
"No, Mr. Tux... I expect you to die..."
I don't know about you, but I see some danger of an explosion when you have a laser strong enough to melt rock opening up a pocket of natural gas.
Maybe I haven't had enough caffiene this morning, but it seems like a potential problem to me.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Main source: Lasers and Electro-Optics, Davis, Cambridge Editor.
For example, a full tank of jet-fuel in an aircraft is pretty much non-flammable. The tank contains liquid Jet-A and Jet-A vapour, but not a lot of oxygen. The mixture is far too rich to burn. A spark in that situation would just...spark.
However, a fuel tank containing very little fuel, but having plenty of oxygen (or other oxidiser) is basically a bomb. A spark in that situation (as is the probable cause with TWA-800) will cause a powerful explosion, even though there's only a tiny fraction of fuel compared to the tank when it's full.
A stochiometric mixture burns most vigorously. That's what you try and obtain in your car's combustion chambers. Stochiometric means the fuel/oxidiser ratio is just right such that the available fuel matches the amount of available oxygen.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Why not? I see no reason that they can't run pipes down as they drill to evacuate gasses and dust as the rock is vaporized
Also it is very difficult to drill down and then sideways, as is common with current methods. Without this facility, the oil rig or platform is useless once the oil below has been used upMaybe, but I would think there would be a way to drill at an angle, maybe with some high grade reflective joints. I'm not an optical physicist though
Conventional drilling also places a pipe as the bit moves forward, cementing the drill hole. With this system the hole must be "burned" and then a pipe forced down. This process will negate any speed gains in the actual drillingOnce again there is no reason the pipes can't be pushed through the hole as you go, keeping the speed gains
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Wouldn't this be the ideal drill to use for getting into Lake Vostok? Scientists have been looking for a way to get into the underground lake without polluting it for a few years now. Surely a laser wouldn't pollute the lake at all.
They could drill to within a few centimeters of the lake and then send down a probe. The probe could disinfect itself at the bottom of the hole before bashing through the rest of the rock to get into the lake, take samples and do tests.
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Firstly conventional drilling technology employs fixed drill bits, which use water and suction to remove rock debris. This system has no such facility for that.
Also it is very difficult to drill down and then sideways, as is common with current methods. Without this facility, the oil rig or platform is useless once the oil below has been used up
Conventional drilling also places a pipe as the bit moves forward, cementing the drill hole. With this system the hole must be "burned" and then a pipe forced down. This process will negate any speed gains in the actual drilling