Boat/Ship engines/cooling system.

"hls" wrote in news:T92dnZz83dOwv37WnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

They have accidents. a *lot* of accidents. More than they have any right to short of a chinese mine. Or perhaps a virginia coal mine.

And they couldn't put a shutoff below the ocean surface somewhere? There's all kinds of ways this could have been avoided that weren't used.

Only above the surface. Of the water. And sparks *can* be avoided easily And without any risk.

And there's still another hole they're not plugging. What happens when you have three holes in a container filled with water and you only plug two of them? You get more pressure out of the third. I have yet to hear any mention of a way of stopping this eventuality and the things that could result from this bit of basic physics. There's absolutely no way they're going to pump the oil out of the capped part faster than it's coming out already. If fact it *has* to be lower because you can't pump any liquid more than about 30 feet down. An impeller or pump on the top of their jury rig may help, but then you have the problem of the hundreds of feed of pip you're pushing the oil up.

Engineers do such all the time. And do it properly. *When* they're not contrainted by people overly greedy of profit.

From your latest post it's abundantly clear you have no technical or mechanical knowledge whatsoever. Your parents probably had to take away your blocks because you kept hurting yourself with them. Suggest you focus your attention on parking your Prius in the parking spaces at the local organic co-op without hitting someone else's car yet again instead of ranting about things you have less than zero knowledge of.

O&G can only be made 100% safe by eliminating it.

There is no need for a flame war.

We cannot, at this time, function well without oil and gas. We are already in deep trade imbalance to the oil producing companies, not to mention suppliers like China.

Having worked offshore a lot, I totally understand the need for safety in operations. If you had ever worked offshore, you might understand. While no one wants ecological damage, we also want to come home alive and well.

I have been on platforms where people died. It is not a fun nor glamorous situation.

There is always room for improvement, although the technology is very advanced even at this moment. Unless every employee keeps his head in the sunshine, mistakes can happen, and these mistakes can overwhelm every safety system.

How many times have I heard (now, grimacing) that " we will put safeguards into place so that this sort of thing will never happen again". It is a great goal, but something ALWAYS "happens again".

I laud your concern about the environment. I just think that your view is rather one-sided at this time.

On the web, Wild Well Control

As little as I know about that, (next to nothing) no harm in reading up.

Why can't there be two for one, two BOPs in one unit, in case one fails? It would cost more money, but it might save some lives. cuhulin

You could, in theory, install two BOPs, one over the other. In some cases, however, redundancy also reflects at double the projected failure rate.

In most cases, the BOP never comes into play. In this case, it happened so fast, and the BOP failed, that it was not unexpected that the people up around the moon pool died.

A BOP is essentially a valve that you can drill through.

The upset poster worried about putting another valve in line so that a well, out of control, could be shut in. The BOP IS a valve.

After wells are put into service, they have a downhole safety valve (DSV) by which you can, in theory, shut off the well flow. Normally they work. Sometimes they dont.

Sorry guys, I needed to answer this.

Only very simple lift pumps are restrained by this atmospheric pressure limitation.

To wit, atmospheric pressure is on the average of 14.7 psi. The static pressure of water (not brine) is 0.433 psi, meaning that a simple lift pump can pull a hydrostatic head of (14.7/.432) or about 34 feet.

But the fact is that this type of pump is not at all used in this sort of installation.

Subsea electrical submersible pumps (or similar) can pump against many hundreds or thousands of pounds of pressure, at very high delivery rates.

The dissenting poster needs to study the technology that he is so aggressive in denouncing.

A different leak,,, Leak from Exelon, New Jersey nuclear power plant.

cuhulin

The suction lift is measured from the surface of the liquid to the pump, the amount of pipe under the surface of the liquid has no bearing on the suction lift as the liquid pressures are balanced regardless of that depth. The length of the subsurface pipe is only relevant to frictional velocity losses.

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3173.bay.webtv.net:

"Contaminated" with tritium. Love it. Obviously the author has no idea what tritium is. Happened up here a while back. Tritium is just about the most innocuous radioactive substance you could have. Has to be, it's hydrogen. There's nothing much it *can* give off. Pure Alpha radiation. shielding required? A piece of paper.

Minor point really, but it would be T2O and *not* just tritium of course.

Wrong on all counts.

Quite correct, and I should have mentioned this. I was just going after his 30 foot statement.

I dont know what they plan to do with the oil they evacuate from this leaking system anyway. If they have to pump into a tanker that might present lift heights greater than some 10 meters, then they would still have to use a positive displacement pump. Since they would be lifting oil, with a lower density than water, the 30 foot rule of thumb would be somewhat higher.

Paul wrote in news:hs2t7k$e2f$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

Not even close to accurate:

And as it clearly shows under decay - one electron given off. Hence Almost undetectable radiation that only goes 6 mm through air even. They *do* call it Beta radiation, but what I said about such radiation is exactly correct.

"hls" wrote in news:TrCdnTCKtNRUInnWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

*And* counteract 5,000 feet of oil with gravity working on it as well?

"hls" wrote in news:KvCdnamBpIUpwHjWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Which only applies if they don't have a pump at the bottom as I thought I made clear, but perhaps there was some vagueness there.

Surely the initial pressure forcing out in the first place would help this. Otherwise they could never get it to the surface in the first place and an oil well would be completely pointless as you couldn't get any oil. My point was that the oil pressure at the ocean floor would be more than at the surface.

What are we dumping into the Gulf to fix the oil spill?

Some kind of super secret soap? cuhulin

Of course. Many wells will not flow naturally. The downhole pressure is just not high enough to pressure oil/water out of the well.

In such a case, you have to pump the oil out. On shore, the traditional "pump jack" may be used, with "sucker rods" going down the production tubing and activating the downhole mechanical pump.

If you really want to move some fluid from a formation that has little pressure, electrical centrifugal pumps can be used. They can pump hundreds or thousands of barrels per day.

That 30 foot statement only applies if your pump is one that operates on reduction of atmospheric pressure. Those types of pumps can only lift a column of fluid which has a pressure of atmospheric or less. But, you could do it in stages, of course. Several stations at 30 foot intervals and you can be over a small mountain.

I couldnt find what you were referring to, but I'll suspect that someone is wanting to use oil slick dispersant or such.

These are soaplike formulations that are, themselves, not toxic. The idea is that (1) it makes the oil appear to go away and (2) it disperses the oil into such tiny particles that the natural bacteria in the ocean have a better chance of metabolizing the oil.

There are legitimate uses for bacterial degradation of oil, but it has been misused so many times by charlatans, or even well-meaning entrepreneurs, that it is hazardous to one's professional reputation to even recommend it.