Then STFU. You are not stating facts, and have no expertise in this field obviously.
Lye, sodium carbonate, sodium silicate, phosphates and a lot of other things can be used as "builders" for soaps. These things improve the efficiency of a formulation but are NOT themselves soaps
Many of the oil slick dispersants are NOT soaps, but this misnomer is often applied to them.
Using a true soap in sea water would be a foolish thing to do. There is so much magnesium and other polyvalent ions in sea water you would end up with soap scum ("bathtub ring").
I have the formulation somewhere. It was made by the old Exxon Performance Chemicals group (old Enjay) , which was then swallowed into a JV with Nalco. Nalco still exists, EPC does not as such, even though some of the product names survived.
The other main ingredient of soap is usually oil. Since you have plenty of oil already, there is a lot less to be gained by adding soap since soap is itself mostly made of oil. Saponification of the oil (turning it into soap) would cause it to dissolve in water and break apart. But to do that you would need to contain the oil to get it to react with lye. If you could contain the oil you would have already solved the problem.
Energy expert: Nuking oil well only thing we can do.
formatting link
If they do that, it might create a giant hole in that oil gusher/oil volcano well.
Hayba lobba lobba lobba ling ling long,,,, they have ruined our Gulf and now it is gone,,,, I want our Gulf to come back home,,,, Hayba lobba lobba lobba ling ling long,,,,, I want our Gulf to come back home,,,,,,, cuhulin
snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net wrote in news:19507-4C0305DE-8230@storefull-
3173.bay.webtv.net:
That is one hell of an add site for something that claims to deliver news.
Well, the concept (not the nuke part) has precedent. The first atomic bomb was set off by a shaped charge that forced the uranium parts together creating critical mass. As I recall from the mini-series "Oppenheimer" it took forever for the guy to get it right. In the meantime he had all kinds of fun with an endless supply of Military explosives. The Russians have done it, but I have no idea what kind of failure rate they get.
However how long is it going to take to drill a hole 18,000 feet deep FCS? That seems to about the magnitude of project Mohole.
Many true soaps are made from vegetable oils, such as tall oil, coconut oil, etc. These are not chemically very similar to petroleum hydrocarbons ("oil") since they are triglyceride esters. Many of our ancestors made "lye soap" by heating lard or other ester oils with caustic soda (sodium hydroxide or even wood ashes would work) to split the ester, forming the sodium or potassium salts and glycerine.
These soaps had a lot of "lye" left in them and would clean clothes pretty well if you had soft water. If you had hard water (excess of calcium, magnesium, etc), they didnt work well at all, formed "Gorilla snot", and left grayed deteriorated clothing.
Calling these oil slick dispersants "soap" was always just a misnomer.
Dispersants were often formulated on things such as oleic acid partial esters of glycerol, which is nonionic as such, and which biodegrades easily. You could eat this stuff, and it does not poison the sea.
The fact, as I see it, is that BP had no idea how much oil was being lost into the Gulf. Yesterday it was aired that the true volume of contamination may be as much as 20,000 barrels per day (840,000 US gallons). That is too much to even consider treating as an oil slick or minor spill.
"Top kill" could have worked IF they could have gotten the mud to bottom hole. To do this most easily, they would have had to pump it down the drill string and fill from the bottom (and then it wouldnt have been "top kill"). Trying to pump it into the well casing while the well is blowing just aspirates the mud out through the leaks and into the sea, IMO.
Now they are going to try to cut off the top of the surface casing and pull the oil BOP away, then attach a new valve assembly. I want to know where the drill string is right now. Did the drill string blow out of the hole (I dont think so, but that used to happen a lot before the BOP was used.) Having that "fish" in the hole wont make things any easier.
Ex President of Shell make some comments yesterday about the "blowout protectors". Wrote a book. Someone should tell him that the common term is "blowout preventor". I am sure he can identify oil on his Cesar salad.
In this context how well soap will wash clothes isn't important and they do make soap from petroleum.
The spill may be as large as 95000 bbl/day.
The hope was that the riser being partially collapsed would offer enough resistance to flow that the pressure would build high enough at the top of the well to force the mud down the hole.
I don't think the drill is involved. Drilling was over. They were getting the well ready for production when the original accident occurred. They now are planning to saw off the riser and drop a cap over it that can suck up the oil.
formatting link
This looks to me like they are complete idiots. When they saw off the riser it will become a real gusher and they won't be able to get their cap that is on the end of a mile long straw anywhere near the pipe due to the pressure coming out of the well. Maybe the plan is to first fasten the cap to the BOP housing so that all they have to do is draw it down onto the open pipe after the riser is sawn through and falls away.
If they can shear the riser then they should have been able to just crush the riser flat but not cut it off. That would have restricted the flow out enough that the top kill would have had a chance to work. It looks to me that whole top kill procedure was done for show. BP would prefer to construct a solution that recovers oil from the well.
I saw/heard on a tv news program a few days ago, they will use a diamond wire to cut off the pipe, but first they will put more mud down into the pipe to (hopefully) slow down the oil gusher.They hope that will give them a few moments to place the new cap over the sawed off pipe.
If they can cut this riser pipe with these jaws why couldn't they use jaws to crush the pipe while they were trying to force mud down into the well? Wouldn't squeezing the pipe shut restrict the flow thru the pipe significantly?
The top kill failed to work because the mud just flowed out thru the open riser pipe (the high pressure leaked out thru the very pipe they are now going to snip with the jaws). The answer to the above question is simple. They don't want to close this well down - they want to salvage it and recover the oil and they don't care how much spills while trying to accomplish that goal.
They can't crush the pipe with the jaws. They're using a saw. You're nuts about them preferring a spill to shutting down the well too. They'll still get the oil out with the relief wells. Take off your tin hat.
On the web, whichever search engine you prefer, The Importance of Port Fourchon,Louisiana
Also pertaining to commerce Shipping up and down the Mississippi River.Last week, I heard on a radio talk show,
formatting link
JT and Dave radio talk show) at least one of those big Ship's engines in the Gulf of Mexico did stop working because of the BP oil in the Gulf of Mexico. cuhulin
Why not? If they can cut through the pipe with those jaws, they could certainly crush it enough to significantly reduce the flow (assuming you replace the sharp blade with something not so sharp). The point remains that the top kill and junk shot failed because the riser pipe didn't offer enough resistance to flow and thus they couldn't overcome the pressure from below. It is apparent that they could have mechanically increased the pipes resistance by using the jaws to squeeze the pipe closed.
They're using saws for some operations but the published plan is to shear the main pipe through which the oil is leaking into the gulf using the jaws. If you watched the live stream you would have observed the jaws that are going to shear the pipe are already in place.
BP is required by federal law to have a plan in place and to make that plan available to the public. Perhaps if you read BP's plan you might stop guessing and you would know what BP says they can do.
It is a reasonable interpretation of the facts.
What they appear to prefer is to start pumping up into a tanker the 10 million dollars worth of oil this well can produce every day. The cost in terms of leakage into the gulf may be calculated as a smaller cost than forfeiting the chance to acquire the oil.
According to BP plan, if the top kill succeeded, the next step would have been to fill the pipe with cement.
And maybe that riser pipe would crack instead of crimp, just wasting time. And maybe they could make all worse by cracking the BOP right off the stack in the attempt. I think the BOP is restricting the flow.
I think the jaws are just to move the mess out of the way. The riser system is more than one pipe, and maybe not even suitable for crimping, as the BOP was supoosed to do to the stack. I haven't seen a published plan, just heard and seen dipicted on TV what's happening. Cut most the riser away with a saw, move it out of the way, then saw the remainder off right above the BOP, getting a clean even cut there, maybe with a different type saw. I've heard nothing about shearing.
Sure. Post the plan here. I'll read it.
So what? They can always drill more holes. The oil ain't going nowhere. Something I haven't heard mentioned is whether the spouting might subside on its own, as well pressure is relieved. The flow looks weaker than earlier pictures, but that might be wrong.
Watch the live video and see if any of those wild guesses are valid. The top kill operation was performed with the end of the riser pipe wide open. The amount they have already crushed the pipe so far would have been an improvement over a wide open end. If the pipe had been squished in numerous places (including the wide open end) the junk-shot that was supposed to plug up the pipe would probably have had a chance to work instead of just flowing out the wide open end of the pipe.
That makes you poorly informed.
I already posted the specific part of the plan involving the shears two posts before you started making your wild guesses.
formatting link
This particular plan is only a temporary solution to salvage the hole with a temporary cap that they don't expect to be 100% leak free, but will allow thenm to capture most of the oil. They are building another larger housing that they hope to install by end of June that they say will be a permanent leak free attachment that will allow them to extract oil from the well.
You mean the oil wouldn't be going anywhere if the top kill had worked. It is certainly going somewhere now that the top kill failed.
You probably didn't know this, but it costs big big money to drill a hole like this. And BP is acting as if doing anything that means losing this hole would cost more than cleaning up the mess that follows if they proceed to a conclusion that allows them to salvage the hole. If they do succeed in turning this into a producing well their stock is going to bounce right back to where it was so there is a massive amount of money to be lost if they lose the hole.
It could take 10 years or more before the pressure subsides on its own.
What I saw so far is a circular saw making the cut and the jaws appearing to carry away and drop the riser. Didn't see it all. Like watching paint dry.
Maybe. I can live with that.
Thanks. Looks like what I saw depicted on TV, but couldn't read the text. Wonder why that makes no mention of the circular saw. Looks like the "collar" they're using would make sustaining pressure for a topkill more practical now. But they might be at the point mentally they just want to forge ahead with sucking up the oil to stop the increasing public hysteria.
They're drilling 2 relief well holes right now. To plug the cuurent hole. Maybe they can use part of that drilling to redirect the bit to punch another hole in the reservoir after they plug the leaking hole. They'll probably get their oil in any event.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.