My Hairbrain Proposal for Stopping the Oil Spill → Washingtons Blog
My Hairbrain Proposal for Stopping the Oil Spill - Washingtons Blog

Saturday, May 15, 2010

My Hairbrain Proposal for Stopping the Oil Spill

Preface 1: BP will attempt to seal the leak using heavy drilling fluids and then cement:

BP likely will try to shut down the well completely late this week using a technique called “top kill,” BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said at a news conference Monday.

The process involves pumping heavy drilling fluids through two 3-inch lines into the blowout preventer that sits on top of the Macondo wellhead a mile underwater. This would first restrict the flow of oil from the well, which then could be sealed permanently with cement.

If this works, it could stop the oil flow. I hope it works.

If it doesn't work, and if no one comes up with a better idea, the following proposal is a last-ditch fallback plan.

Preface 2: This proposal will only work if the seabed upon which the leaking oil equipment sits is made of rock. If the mud on the seabed is too thick, it won't work.

BP has never publicly released geological cross-sections of the seabed and underlying rock. BP's Initial Exploration Plan refers to "structure contour maps" and "geological cross sections", but such drawings are designated "proprietary information" and have been kept under wraps.

The oil spill is taking place 5,000 feet under the ocean surface, and is gushing up from many thousands feet below the ocean floor:



Here's a graphic from the Times-Picayune showing the same thing (and accurately showing that there are currently 3 leaking oil plumes):

We need to drop something big, flat and very heavy that will cover the entire area where the leaks are occurring with such tremendous weight that it will act like a new layer of rock which seals all of the oil.

Like what?

A barge would be perfect.

Barges are large, heavy, flat-bottomed boats. They are designed to carry a lot of weight:

A typical barge measures 195 by 35 feet (59.4 m × 10.6 m), and can carry up to 1,500 tons of cargo.

That's a typical barge. Some can carry much more.

The military could sail or tow a huge barge to the spill site, and then sink it.

Using a number of vessels with the ability to guide the barge down to the spill site using cable (drill ships, ocean cable-laying ships, tow boats or whatever has the strongest cable winches), the barge is carefully lowered down to the spill site at a controlled speed.

Engineers lowered the 100-ton containment dome:


And the 2-ton top hat containment cap:


So one or several vessels could certainly lower a barge.

Nautical engineers will - obviously - make sure that the flat bottom stays flat-side down.

Once in the correct position, many more tons of iron, concrete, rock and/or heavy, obsolete machinery can be piled on top of the barge to add weight.

Water pressure 5,000 feet below the ocean surface is around 2,500 pounds per square inch.

The barge (with ballast) will be heavy enough to simply crush the blowout preventers, pipes and other drilling equipment as flat as a pancake (or you can remove some equipment first).

Then you pour concrete over the barge until it forms a sarcophagus. You seal the whole thing with concrete.

Concrete is poured underwater all the time. The pressure on the seafloor where the leak is occurring is obviously quite high. So this would be extreme conditions. But scientists and engineers could pipe down concrete and adjust for the pressure.

The barge with balast and concrete will then permanently form an impenetrable seal ... as strong or stronger than the rocks which BP drilled through in the first place.

Would it work?

Note 1: BP is drilling a second rig near the first, and will start pumping oil out in 3 months or so. So the barge only has to seal the spill for a couple of months.

Note 2: From all photographs and drawings I've seen, the ocean bed is flat at the oil spill site. If the sea floor is not perfectly flat, tiny metal pellets, sand or other small particles could be carefully dumped on the seabed before the barge touches bottom, to flatten out the area.

Note 3: This would cost a couple million dollars or perhaps up to a hundred million dollars, which is peanuts compared to the many hundreds of millions BP is already ineffectually spending, let alone the hundreds of billions or trillions in damage to the Gulf if this is not stopped immediately.

Note 4: I majored in environmental science at a good university.

18 comments:

  1. Want to stop the oil spill really fast? Stop BP from selling ANY product, worldwide, till the spill is contained.

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  2. Usually your posts are quite insightful. Some I even print and save. But I work in oil and gas and this is an idiotic suggestion.

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  3. I think there may some problems with this approach.

    1. How flat is the floor of the gulf in this area? If most of the weight of

    the barge fails to rest on the blow out preventer this won't work. Which

    leads to:

    2. What kind of pressure does it take to crush a blow out preventer? It's not

    pounds, it's pounds per square foot that matter here. Will the hull of the

    barge take that kind of pressure? Or will the BOP just make a hole in the

    barge?

    3. How do you lower this kind of weight in a controlled manner? What sort of

    towing vessel has enough extra buoyancy to support a sinking barge?

    4. Finally, if this method fails - and possibly makes the leak worse - now

    what do you do?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for playing, but the barge idea ain't gonna make it. Usually posts on this blog are better than this one.

    There's a heck of a lot of pressure in the oil. It'll find its way along or through the ocean floor under your big heavy thing.

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  5. WHETHER OR NOT any of these endlessly dreampt-up simple-or-not scientific "fixes" actually stop the oil from leaking out of the sea floor, -or even more importantly- one of these brainstorms might prevent this MAN-MADE catastrophe from further negatively effecting the surrounding environment- IT IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT to address the much more urgent need TO FIX the incredibly reckless and destructive approach our ethic, -and- our limited-intellectual-and-organizational-capabilities allow to shape our world so-absurdly-and-supposedly as-if-by-experts -and always with the intention of making the world and life better.

    Better? Wait a second! Are life or the world being made better here?

    It should be made clear and obvious while addressing this more important problem about how these catastrophic situations always seem to arise -that it is- THE-VERY-PRAGMATIC-APPROACH-OUR-ETHIC-ENDORSES that provides the catalyst for our delusion of competence in matters about which there can be no competence bottled-up or sold like miracles -to be presciently presaged IN OUR REALITY that is forever going to be INFINITELY COMPLEX, -and- always confounded with surprises and blindsides.

    We must begin to recognize, this hole drilled in the sea floor bottom a mile down was ALSO given to us to address another previous scientific-problem (an ill-thought-through perception of some supposed shortage of energy and oil) in order to make the world and life better.

    Better? Wait a second! Are life or the world being made better here?

    The world is not better for this scientific blunder. And until we start tallying ALL THE SCIENTIFIC BLUNDERS, and indeed, THERE SEVERITY, we have no chance at making the world or life better, NO CHANCE - NOT EVEN CLOSE.

    For indeed, it is -TODAY- science that is forever worsening our world and our human lives seemingly with no ability to keep itself (science) from slowly making the world and life WORSE -NOT BETTER-.

    The world may be ruled by fate, but even so, philosophically, -I refuse to be so Determinist that I would sit back any longer and let science continue to debase the world.

    Scientists-in-the-Gulf-RIGHT-NOW - mindless-of-their-moral-responsibility-and-only-concerned-with-doing-the-job-BP-wants-done are pouring shiploads of chemical-dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico.

    This further pollution is already being called by some, an even greater scientific blunder than the oil spill itself.

    This is the nature of "SCIENCE" today.

    These are CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY being committed -without any thought of arrest, prosecution or punishment - because these people call themselves, "scientists".

    --- These scientists are nothing less than IGNORANT BARBARIANS and even -CRIMINALS-. ---

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm not so sure about that. The additional weight on the bedrock could actually force more oil out. This is like a bottle of shampoo; hold it upside down, some comes out on it's own, but if you squeeze it at the same time you get more.

    Additionally, it would have to be contoured to the ocean bed. If it was not level and flat everywhere, oil could continue to escape, and you'd have a massive barge in the way as well.

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  7. Here's a bit of unfortunate physics. The amount of pressure required from the weight to stop the flow would be the pressure differential (Pd) between the bottom of the ocean and the pressure inside the blow out preventer if it had functioned properly (several thousand pounds per square inch or PSI). The weight required to create this pressure would be Pd (PSI) times the number of square inches of the object placed on the pressure source, less the weight of the water it displaced (so the object must be far more dense than water). Let's consider a low end estimate of shut-in pressure Pd of about 1250 PSI over the area the proposed sunken ship (say a small 40x140 foot one, covering 800,000 square inches). 5000 PSI times 800,000 square inches is a Billion pounds of weight required, over and above the weight of the water that would be displaced. If concrete that is 2.4x as dense as water is used, then the weight of the required concrete would be 4 Billion times 3.4/2.4, or 1.4 Billion pounds. At 150 pounds per cubic foot, it would only take 9 Million cubic feet. On the 40x140 barge, the concrete would have to be piled 1700 feet high. That's one heck of big chunk of concrete to move.

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  8. A heavy big weight idea won't work. Since the ocean floor at this site is at least 1,000' muddy soft deep the leak pressure will just 'tunnel' its way underneath the weight and will escape with even greater pressure in any number of places along the edges of the barge 'slab'. Then you really have one hell of a problem but now multiplied.

    ReplyDelete
  9. A heavy big weight idea won't work. Since the ocean floor at this site is at least 1,000' muddy soft deep the leak pressure will just 'tunnel' its way underneath the weight and will escape with even greater pressure in any number of places along the edges of the barge 'slab'. Then you really have one hell of a problem but now multiplied.

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  10. What is this reduce the pressure ultimate solution? Certainly this will work, as soon as all the oil is gone. Oil strata is routinely drilled in multiple locations and all wells continue to produce. So, this is BP saying I still want my well.
    If, on the other hand, they are saying that they can hit the old pipe in the deep pool, then they can hit the old pipe, when it is below the 1000 ft of mud by slant drilling. A lot faster solution.(good luck with that folks)What do they do when they hit it?
    They could certainly clamp the old pipe in front of the first leak with a "saddle clamp", a new hose attached to that. Penetrate with a thermite charge and then clip the old pipe with another thermite charge. If all that fails you are now reduced to only one leak, because the thermite "clipper" won't fail. And one leak is easier to "dome" than three.

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  11. I don't understand why the pipe can't simply be crimped to seal it like an old fashioned toothpaste tube, using an appropriately powerful tool - which would actually be relatively easy to construct, it's all about Newton's principle of moments aka levers & fulcrums...

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  12. I AWOKE MYSELF FROM SLEEP WHEN THE WORD "HAIR" WOULD NOT LEAVE MY MIND AND I KNEW THAT I WAS BEING COMMUNICATED TO. WHO'S GOING TO LISTEN TO ME? IF WE COULD PUT A GRATE OVER THE OPENING OF THE SPILL AND ADDED RATTED HAIR TO THE LEAK, IT WOULD SLOW THE LEAK AND EVENTUALLY STOP IT. AT LEAST SLOW IT ENOUGH THAT WE CAN COVER IT. HAIR WOULD ALSO BE A WAY TO CLEAN UP THE OCEAN - ORGANIC MATERIAL LIKE HAIR, FEATHERS, FUR......WOULD PICK UP THE OIL WELL. IT WASN'T MY IDEA, IT WAS GIVEN TO ME. LATER ON THE CLEAN UP MATERIAL WOULD BE GOOD FUEL, IF WE WANT TO USE IT THAT WAY.........ALTHOUGH I THINK WE'VE ALREADY PUT ENOUGH SMOKE AND POLUTION INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. A LITTLE RATTED HAIR GOES A LONG WAY IN PLUGGING UP PIPES.
    JENNIFER EVE

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  13. I don't get this.

    I would think the pressure at well head * the pipe area would have to be counteracted. That's it.

    So if pressure at wellhead is 20k psi vs. the underwater pressure of 2k psi, you'd need a "top" or cork that had 10x the area of the pipe...that's all you'd have to do.

    So take a huge piece of steel with a cutout for the pipe coming from the sea floor. Cut off the BOP and get it out of the way. Lower the slab over the hole and you're done.

    What am I missing?

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  14. I think that you need to use twister or tornado power to circulate the oil that's leaking into a highly powered vacuum thats attached to long tubes which are connected to multiple storage containers.

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  15. Have those of you with obvious training and/or basic reasoning skills called 281-366-5511 with your solutions? I'd really like to know whether these ideas are being presented and ignored or just not presented....

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  16. Yes. This is hairbrain. Too much pressure down there. The barge will burst before it even reaches 4,000 feet. You do realize that even our top made nuke subs cannot withstand 5K. Were you smoking something when you came up with this?

    http://www.globeflash.com

    ReplyDelete
  17. THE GOOD NEWS
    I WANT TO KNOW........What the good news is for BP.
    The Bad news is what's on our minds as a whole.

    I'll tell you what's the GOOD NEWS............The good news is that BP and others do assist in ENDING THE OIL LEAK.

    AND MORE GOOD NEWS.................... And we find lots of SUPER GREAT TECHNOLOGIES to clean up the mess. In the mean time we join together as HUMANITY in a UNIFIED CAUSE.
    We hope, we pray and WE HELP EACH OTHER. We return to the ways of the earth on a larger scale, and live life a more Natural AND Abundant Way. *

    EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS!............................................................................... We become ONE WITH OUR MOTHER again.
    We Remember and we allow LIGHT TO MERGE WITH OUR CONSCIOUSNESS.
    IN ONE LOVE^We Create ANEW
    I see/choose a NEW WORLD. A Peaceful world.
    What about YOU?

    Togetherunify@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete

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