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Hundred-Ton Dome To Collect Oil Spill
eldavojohn writes "After failing to contain the Gulf oil spill any other way, a massive containment dome had the finishing touches put on yesterday. It amounts to a giant concrete-and-steel box made by Wild Well Control that is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water. They expect an 85 percent collection with this device. It's not a pretty situation as Google Earth illustrates."
yes, the safety valve designed to prevent this failed: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/photogalleries/100504-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-containment-science-environment-nation-pictures/?now=2010-05-04-00:01#gulf-oil-spill-containment-device-blowout-protector-preventer_19879_600x450.jpg
No, the dome isn't even lowered yet. The first leak was sealed using submersibles. Furthermore, it isn't expected that sealing that leak will do much (if anything) to reduce the total outflow.
I'd like to know how this dome is supposed to work in rough seas. The oil is going to be contained within the dome and brought to a surface ship. What happens when that surface ship can't maintain position due to inclement weather? Hurricane season starts in another few weeks....
Probably the same way the original rig, which was a semi-submersible, dynamically positioned platform, was controlled: via a system of computer-controlled engines which maintain the vessel's position over the drill site.
What's wrong with offshore drilling? Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes. The important thing here is to learn what went wrong and take steps to ensure that it doesn't happen again in the future.
What went wrong was believing the the oil companies when they said they had a plan in the first place. When ever there's a mistake we get boned. Every time - this isn't just an isolated case - the industry has a 100% track record with major oils spills. The contingency plan that was supposed to keep this from happening didn't get implemented or just wasn't sufficient.
For better or worse human civilization can not exist without environmental impact. The knee-jerk reaction to this unfortunate incident by certain politicians is disappointing to say the least.
It is unfortunate that the knee-jerk reaction of a certain number of politicians is going to be to defend the oil companies and their actions will predictably be enough to keep us from making any real progress.
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
Actually, you basically can't clean birds. It is just a feelgood measure. At the point where you pick them up, they have been trying to clean themselves already, thereby ingesting a huge amount of crude. Even if you get them clean and they don't die from the stress, they die of organ failure due to the toxicity rather sooner than later. The average survival time for a cleaned bird is 1-5 days, from the last data I have seen. It would be better to just euthanize them.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
BP can handle it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7640072/BP-Gulf-clean-up-could-cost-200m.html
Cost of clean up, $200 million
http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2010/May/the-gulf-of-mexico-oil-disaster.html
$2-7 billion
BP
Revenue - $246.1 billion (2009)
Operating income - $26.43 billion (2009)
Net income - $16.58 billion (2009)
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/B/bp_fourth_quarter_and_full_year_2009_results.pdf
Fun things to watch in the news coverage:
Pressure creep. A gross estimate is about a PSI per foot of well depth. Its unlikely the actual pressure at the bottom of the well could exceed 20K PSI. Whats squirting out the top, order of magnitude less. Maybe, extreme cases, you can go plus or minus 50%, maybe. So, people whom know what they're talking about, knowing the drilling mud was around 18 pounds per gallon, and roughly how deep the well is, pretty much know how much pressure the stuff is boiling out of the well. However, the breathless journalists and political hacks feed on each other and one up each other for dramatic reasons. The wildest screamers blew thru 100K psi about two days ago, and I think we're well on our way to nuclear fusion pressure range in journalist-land.
Flow rate creep. An entire modest oilfield might produce 100K barrels per day. Real flow rate out of this well is probably in the range of 2K to 10K bpd. The screaming journalists and hacks recently blew thru 60K bpd, some beyond 200K bpd. We are rapidly approaching the point where the journalists-types will report figures better suited to the entire production of the country of saudi arabia, etc.
Unit changes. The flow is probably a modest 5K BPD. That doesn't sound as cool, so a couple days ago the journalists switched to gallons per day. As the flow decreases, I expect the screamers to switch to pounds per day, finally maybe milliliters per day, just to keep the numbers up.
Flow rate exaggeration. 5K BPD is like a firehose, vaguely. Journalists, over the past few days, have worked their way up on top of each other from adjectives like "dribbling" up to descriptions more in line with a Saturn-V rocket motor at full blast. Its going to flutter the "dome" around like a garden hose hitting a gnat. Uh huh, Yeah right.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Sorbitol esters. Basically modified sugar alcohols. An example of this class of compounds is the Polysorbate 80 that is used to emulsify mild fats in ice cream.
Extremely biodegradable and pretty unlikely to cause any environmental damage.
The gulf coast is going to have oil contamination for years regardless of whether the oil is dispersed or not. Many years of lower concentration contamination is likely favorable to saturating the swamps and estuaries with oil now.
Further, my understanding is that agitated dispersed oil is likely to spread out in the full 3 dimensions of the gulf of Mexico, which isn't good, but it's less bad than having it bob to the surface or concentrate on the bottom where it bio-accumulates in the few deep sea bottom feeders.
Remember when your high school chemistry teacher told you that dilution isn't the solution to pollution? Well when containment isn't an option - like with an oil spill, dilution is preferable to concentration.
Speaking of food, most people in the industrial nations also _eat_ petroleum. In the USA the ratio appears to be 13 kcal petroleum energy to produce 1 kcal of food, according to: http://www.jhsph.edu/bin/g/k/What_You_Eat.pdf (25:1 for producing meat).
I'm not sure if there's enough organic food to go around, at least in the developed countries (there isn't in some undeveloped countries either).
It is possible to produce lots of crops per area by planting many different types of crops in the same area ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercropping ) but this is usually more human labor intensive - machines don't tend to cope with that sort of thing as well.
one of the first things cheney did when bush was elected the first time is get the regulation changed so that a backup was not required for off shore drilling.
Man, you do love you some strawmen. GP's post is clear, with the reference to RR and the solar panels, that problem is one of will, not money. Also,
No, the GP said that we need another Manhattan Project to solve our energy woes. I pointed out that DoE's annual budget exceeds the total cost of the Manhattan Project, thus it would seem apparent to anyone that another project on the scope of the Manhattan project will not even scratch the surface.
Besides, the focus on solar rather misses the point. Solar is next to useless for mobile applications (ships, trucks, planes) that are the primary consumer of oil derived hydrocarbons. If you want to look at this from a scientific standpoint instead of a political one, which energy source do you see on the horizon with sufficient energy density to displace petroleum in this application?
I'm sure there's plenty of money to be found elsewhere, especially when, as GP said, you don't have to be occupying half a dozen countries at once.
No amount of money is going to change the fact that hydrocarbons are the most energy dense non-nuclear fuel.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"The blowout preventer failing is unheard of in the oil industry."
A 1999 government report found at least 117 failures. Amazing what you can do with a simple google search.
http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/319/319AA.pdf
Anyone who says otherwise is clueless or lying or both.
The article does not report this, but other articles have noted that this oil is mostly mixed with water (more than previous spills). This could give hope that more birds than normal can actually be saved.
Do you have a citation for that? Because if that's true, that's pretty frickin' serious.