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Gulf Oil Spill 2010

Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

LynahFan said:
His effort would be far more useful in PR - getting other people to donate money for the cleanup, etc. That, I would not snark at at all.
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No, you'd tell him to just shut up and sing. Or act. Or whatever the hell Costner does.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

I'm wondering why there isn't more outrage about this?
and the media seems to have forgotten about the whole thing.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

huskyfan said:
I'm wondering why there isn't more outrage about this?
and the media seems to have forgotten about the whole thing.
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Yeah, no joke. Wasn't the video of the broken pipe available to BP well before they made their uber lowball estimate of the leakage? I'm starting to sway to the side of fining them back to the stone age for this. I'm already done buying BP (and I usually think boycotts are for a-holes). I feel bad for the owners of the local stations...
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

The media will care more when it hits New England...until then why care?

Personally, I like the idea of blowing the thing up...I am guessing the explosion will cause less damage than the millions of gallons of oil will. But there is still money to be made so we can't do that.

Nuclear Energy FTW.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

Handyman said:
The media will care more when it hits New England...until then why care?

Personally, I like the idea of blowing the thing up...I am guessing the explosion will cause less damage than the millions of gallons of oil will. But there is still money to be made so we can't do that.

Nuclear Energy FTW.
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They can't blow it up. It's a pipeline that ruptured. Why they can't turn off the **** pipeline is beyond me though.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

dxmnkd316 said:
They can't blow it up. It's a pipeline that ruptured. Why they can't turn off the **** pipeline is beyond me though.
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NOT BEING IN THE INDUSTRY OR AN ENGINEER...

I have to imagine once you rupture the oil grounds the pressure is to shoot the oil upwards (hence the oil geysers seen in animations and fiction) so the general issue is to control the pressure/rate at which the oil comes out to be manageable. That being said then it probably isn't a simple matter of "turning off the pipe" or "wedging a metal piece to stop it"... the pressures and forces invoved may be too great to be handled by any conceivable techniques. I'm sure BP could have solved themselves some trouble by putting in a piece of metal or something if they could, then re-build the pipe from the cite of the failure and so on.

The whole issue is that the fail switch didn't work... if they had another way they'd probably do it right about now.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

Patman said:
NOT BEING IN THE INDUSTRY OR AN ENGINEER...

I have to imagine once you rupture the oil grounds the pressure is to shoot the oil upwards (hence the oil geysers seen in animations and fiction) so the general issue is to control the pressure/rate at which the oil comes out to be manageable. That being said then it probably isn't a simple matter of "turning off the pipe" or "wedging a metal piece to stop it"... the pressures and forces invoved may be too great to be handled by any conceivable techniques. I'm sure BP could have solved themselves some trouble by putting in a piece of metal or something if they could, then re-build the pipe from the cite of the failure and so on.

The whole issue is that the fail switch didn't work... if they had another way they'd probably do it right about now.
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I can tell you that pipelines exist that are rated for hundreds of psi. Unless that oil is coming out at 100s of atmospheres of pressure, valves exist that seal tight at those pressures. Why this pipe doesn't have shutoff valves is beyond me.

One of my favorite engineering sites: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ansi-pipes-flanges-d_216.html and http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/carbon-stainless-steel-flanges-d_348.html

And 900 lb pipe isn't the top. I've seen ratings for much, much higher. Again, I'm not a geological engineer so I don't know what type of forces we're dealing with, but I can't imagine they're that high. I might be speaking out of complete ignorance on oil piping but and the materials and forces...

I'm hoping there's someone on the board that is involved in the oil industry that could shed some light on this.

Edit: Obviously you can't use carbon steel pipe for this application. I'm also unsure of how 316 SS pipe would hold up in the deep ocean.
 
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Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

dxmnkd316 said:
I can tell you that pipelines exist that are rated for hundreds of psi. Unless that oil is coming out at 100s of atmospheres of pressure, valves exist that seal tight at those pressures. Why this pipe doesn't have shutoff valves is beyond me.

One of my favorite engineering sites: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ansi-pipes-flanges-d_216.html

And 900 lb pipe isn't the top. I've seen ratings for much, much higher. Again, I'm not a geological engineer so I don't know what type of forces we're dealing with, but I can't imagine they're that high. I might be speaking out of complete ignorance on oil piping but and the materials and forces...

I'm hoping there's someone on the board that is involved in the oil industry that could shed some light on this.
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and honestly I don't know your background either... I'm just going on my loose knowledge of general stuff that I've come across in my 9 years of college. I wonder sometimes if I was better suited to be an engineer or something more on the hard science lines than what I'm currently doing.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

Patman said:
and honestly I don't know your background either... I'm just going on my loose knowledge of general stuff that I've come across in my 9 years of college. I wonder sometimes if I was better suited to be an engineer or something more on the hard science lines than what I'm currently doing.
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Well, I'm a process chemical engineer who designs pipe systems as part of his job. ;) I've never actually dealt with pressures this high, but I've definitely specified a few 300# rated pipelines. But like I said, I'm completely in the dark with all the aspects of deep sea pipelines. I'm sure if they had a way to shut it down they would, but what I'm getting at is why this pipe didn't have a shutoff valve at the pipe entrance.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

The ocean floor there is 5000 ft deep. 5000 ft of water = 2200 psi of pressure, so if the oil is able to force its way into the ocean, it is under at least that much pressure. Of course, the pipe only has to handle the difference between the oil pressure and the water pressure, but it just puts it into perspective that the oil CAN be under that kind of pressure.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

dxmnkd316 said:
But what's the gauge pressure on those pipelines. That's what I'm curious about.
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Here was someone else's estimate that I found. Sounds reasonable to me:

If the crude oil has a specific gravity of 0.82 (and different crudes have varying spedific gravities) then the pressure at the bottom of a 5000' pipe filled with crude would be 0.82 x 2165 or 1775 psi.

Suppose however that the oil is at the bottom of a hole 8000 feet below sea level under 3000 more feet of rock with a specific gravity of 2.5. Now the total pressure of sea water plus rock overburden at the bottom of the hole could be:
2165 + (3/5)*2.5*2165 = 5412 PSI

However, the oil in the 8000 foot well would have a pressure of 8/5 * 1775 = 2840 PSI.

So there is a pressure differential of up to 5412 - 2840 = 2572 PSI available to push the oil up the well.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

I'm not sure why the discussion of the gage pressure of the oil in the pipe came up. But I'll contribute this anyway.

While the idea of having 2500 psi in a pipe seems pretty high, in reality there are pressures much higher than that used all over (some here probably already know this). For example, I have seen hydraulic hoses rated up to 6000 psi on heavy equipment and even more insane is the 35,000 psi (2400 atm) that diesel fuel is pressurized at in high pressure common rail fuel systems used on new diesel engines.

Just wanted to add that, mostly just to illustrate that it isn't like we haven't ever pressures this high and have no idea how to deal with them. (well, they're proving now that we can't deal with them under a mile of water....:rolleyes: )

One question that I have, hopefully someone else can answer it. I was under the impression that this oil was coming straight from the ground, straight out of the well and that the pipe that we see in the videos is the pipe that takes the oil from the ground to the rig. Not like this is a pipe like a normal pipeline that transports oil from one location to another after it has already been drawn from the ground. If this is the case, and my assumption is correct, wouldn't a solution be to drill a hole 200 feet deep, 50 feet away from the leak, pack the bottom of that hole with about 500 lbs of plastic explosives and let it blow? Wouldn't the whole thing collapse in on itself? Maybe I'm off base here, if I am, I'd like to hear others reasonings why it wouldn't work.
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

dxmnkd316 said:
I'm sure if they had a way to shut it down they would, but what I'm getting at is why this pipe didn't have a shutoff valve at the pipe entrance.
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I'd wondered about that too, but you'd have to think BP would have a lot of very bright deep sea drilling experts working on this problem around the clock, as well as access to contractors, governments, consultants and even other oil companies' disaster expertise in the deep sea sector. That they can't seem to solve it by now suggests that the problems are deeper than we know....
 
Re: Gulf Oil Spill 2010

Puck Swami said:
I'd wondered about that too, but you'd have to think BP would have a lot of very bright deep sea drilling experts working on this problem around the clock, as well as access to contractors, governments, consultants and even other oil companies' disaster expertise in the deep sea sector. That they can't seem to solve it by now suggests that the problems are deeper than we know....
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IIRC, It did. They got severly damaged or destroyed during the explosion and subsequent sinking of the oil rig. Their failure might have also led to part of the explosion. I'm not 100% on this, but i think i read that somewhere.
 
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