We received a very interesting “hack” today from our good friend [Jonny Dryer] that really got us thinking, but first a little background.
For those that live only inside of a box on top of a mountain (we know who you are), there was an explosion of a British Petroleum oil rig about 40 miles southeast of Venice, LA. Being proclaimed by Carol Browner as “probably the biggest environmental disaster” – stated a month after the accident.
And the oil is still spewing. Now, we’re not ones for criticizing how this event is being handled; no, we left it to the experts.
Back to our point, [Jonny Dryer’s] sent us his plan for slowing the oil spill, by using liquid nitrogen, pretty genius if you ask us. And we were wondering what possible solutions other readers had come up with? Share your thoughts on this situation in the comments.
A saying comes to mind when I view this situation. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Yes, the LN2 idea I posted on YouTube back on May 29th, along with a parallel idea of using chilled brine. Both can do the job and chilled brine has a better heat capacity. I have a half dozen methods of stopping this thing, chilling is just one. Here is the original link. And for the grousers, at least there are intelligent people who have experience thinking of potential solutions. LN2 can work, you just have to use a pumped vent line to allow it to evaporate. That’s a given.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlo8DODpBqc
Agreed Jon, there were a LOT of screwups that had to happen for an event this devastating to occur. There needs to be an inquiry as to how all the safety devices that were supposed to prevent this were not checked /disabled and we need to ensure that this never happens again.
I am not sure what BP and whoever they are working with are trying to accomplish but it seems to me that when gas goes up to 5 to 6 bucks a gallon or more that there will be a lot of money available for whatever…Anyhow it is a 6 inch pipe. This is not a rocket science situation. This is a matter of intentional release of oil as far as I am concerned.
go down 10 ft from the end of the pipe..Drill 2 two one inch holes in one side and out the other…. Put in two 1 inch Solid silver rods perpendicular to eachother to make an x. Seal the ends with whatever…Bubblegum…Doesn’t freaking matter..Go down 8 Ft…Repeat process…Go to the bottom x…Go down 20 ft from there… Drill One Inch hole in one side only…Pump in Foam at twice the pressure of the oil…Meter the pressure on the end of the leaking pipe.. When the pressure starts dropping Drill another hole just beneath the upper x….Start pumping foam… When the pipe clogs sufficiently siphon off the oil from above the clog..Pump in 2 Ft deep of concrete into the cylinder. manufacture a 10 ft piece of pipe 1/16 of an inch larger diameter larger than the existing pipe…Attach a well head to it…Make sure this one works correctly ;) …Drill holes in it for welding purposes… Slide pipe and well head over pipe…First weld it way down on the bottom where it matters…Then weld it at the holes…Remove lower bolts to release clog…Bring in oil rig to continue pumping oil..Clean up your damned mess.. There you go BP… Do this and it will work. Think positive. Make it happen..And free gas for life would be nice…Do I need to draw you a diagram?? With crayons for you to understand??? NO I do not. You fellas are pretty bright…I feel that this was intentionally done…Now intentionally undo it please.
All thinks, what BP have done, dont work and BP know this. It was the second Time
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/37368377#37368377
I think, the Live Stream was to find help. On the Homepage from BP are more Streams.
@xorpunk:
Whatever, you rant on about how America sucks as much as you want…This is America’s problem to clean up, but have fun with European gas prices!
Note to self: invest in British bicycle companies…
lol all these geniuses and who wants to bet it won’t be stopped within at least the next 5 months and when it is by none of the mentioned solutions?
All these semantics are boring..do something or stfu..enough said
get a pipe just a little bit smaller than the well pipe and have a valve and fitting to hook up a hose for pumping and put some thermite on the outside of the small pipe and set it off when its in the other. BAM instant weld. hope thay don’t take my idea lol.
To those people saying, the scientists working on that are smart enough and didn’t fix it:
The NASA spent a load of money to create a pen based on ink, which could be used in zero-gravity.
The Russians took a simple pencil (graphite based).
I’m not saying that the Americans aren’t smart enough…but i’m saying, that they may be too smart to come up with solutions, that save money AND are effective.
@Nomad:I’ll say it for you..
Americans are dumb asses who only go to work and buy stuff.
I work in a critical IT field that deals with software implementations in robotic manufacturing. When a company opens a plant anywhere in America you’ll never see and American there doing any IT work. Maybe pushing a broom or running some wires or plugging things in.
Face it..America fell behind decades ago. Even their critical grids have been penetrated by other countries crackers with little effort. All their technologies are designed and manufactured by other countries..they are all just working zombies..and now other countries clean shores are going to get their mess on them.
Perhaps an extremely large vinyl(or other material capable of holding the oil/water mix without bursting or being dissolved by the oil) balloon that covers the entire flow area, which is filled by the oil and perhaps a bit of seawater…complete with a siphon to prevent the balloon from overpressuring and bursting, as well as to pump the oil/water mix out to be separated later…of course this would require a surface level storage facility, or at least a constant stream of tankers.
@Stormrider
“Right, Octel, let’s just replace everything with communism, because that works so well. I’ll just ask those 20 million Russians…oh wait”
What you’re referring to is state capitalism, Stalinism, Leninism, etc.
The USSR did not adhere to Marxist ideals. Educate yourself.
“Have you ever been to the states?”
I live in the US. Is it so surprising that an American citizen advocates for communism after observing this utter mess of a country for so many years?
“Do you understand how big the place is here? That public transportation doesn’t work in it’s current form?”
The public transportation in my city works just fine. I don’t own a car.
“See my post to the other guy, if you hate oil and energy so much, get off the damned computer!”
Computer manufacturing is a one-time use of oil. Petroleum-fueled transportation continually uses much more oil than it took to make my (recycled, secondhand) computer. Don’t try to equate my single computer with the millions of tons of Chinese-made plastic disposable crap that’s flooding America and the world at large.
Saying that personal vehicle use in the first-world is excessive and wasteful is not equivalent to asking for a return to the stone age or whatever dumb strawman argument you’re driving at.
“Seriously, if you’re so serious about it, quit supporting it!”
My contribution is that I ride a bicycle and use public transportation. I don’t eat meat, I shop locally, etc.
Not everyone can make these kinds of contributions. Societal class is definitely a factor when talking about energy use, which is why I’m focusing on rich assholes who drive their Hummers to the chain megamart to buy a single bottle of water rather than some poor wage-slave in Bumfuck, Alabama.
“That’s the problem with asshats like Al Gore and the rest of his little club. They fly around burning hundreds of gallons of fuel an hour in their private jets, and overload airports flying into global warming conferences, but they want ME to stop using AC and walk everywhere?”
Really bad trolling here. Are you even trying?
Just because Al Gore flies in a jet (which sucks) doesn’t mean that everyone who shares his mindset about climate change does the same.
These lazy ad-hominem attacks definitely reveal your maturity about the topic.
“You environmentalists are retarded. You want all of the benefits on what the energy industry provides, but you don’t want them to make any money, and you don’t want them to make any energy.”
I want some of the benefits that the energy industry provides, but that doesn’t mean I want the excess of the typical American lifestyle.
I’m all in favor of wind, geothermal, solar, hydroelectric, and (in some cases) nuclear energy.
“What the hell do you want? Alternitive energy? Right, because you are the first in line bitching about it. Nuke power…the sky is falling, what if something goes wrong! Hydroelectric dams…you’re killing the fish! Solar panels…they are ugly, and use toxic chemicals in their production! Wind power…wait, we can’t use that, it kills birds!”
More shitty strawman posturing.
Nuclear power would be great if regulation and oversight was greatly increased. New designs pose barely any risk, much less problems with meltdown like older reactors (Chernobyl).
“So how do you expect us to maintain our current standard of living?”
I don’t.
In fact, I would be very happy if the current standard of living went the way of the dodo (which, ironically, was killed by an earlier version of that standard).
The American lifestyle is wholly unsustainable.
“I’m all about getting away from using oil if something else better and cheaper comes along! I’m sure the energy companies are too.”
No. Energy companies are all about cheaper, not necessarily better. That’s why this oil spill happened — they were too cheap to ensure that their safety equipment was up to spec.
@octel Yea I’m such a BP shill I got banzored from Holstein for not wearing my hardhat outside :( Google around a bit…
@jdog sure I’ve seen pipelines to the surface all the time…they’re called drill strings ;)
@wes yea, very nice analogy. thus my idea of a concrete bunker that would initially siphon, and later act as an anchor for a hydraulic ram to plug the main hole. I wasn’t aware of the wreckage down there tho, that makes everything a lot more complicated, in terms of ROV work and in terms of large stable undersea working surfaces.
I agree with many other posters here, the amount of information available is pitiful at the moment, and it really wouldn’t be that difficult (compared to an 80 person call center, wtf) to provide more complete information if they really want to do the crowdsourcing thing properly.
However, I also agree with other posters, the technology involved here is esoteric and not well known to the public so the chance of oddball ideas actually working is further slimmed by the divide. When you have entire oilfield supply companies that specialize in something as niche-sounding as mud pumping equipment, you know you’re in the deep end…
Damn I should have taken that ROV job back in 2005 when it was on offer, by now I’d be rocking that triple overtime :D
Ok, so IDK if this has been said, but here it goes:
You are NOT smarter than BP. They employ hundreds, if not thousands, of experts in this field. They have worked in offshore drilling for years. And don’t you forget for half of a second that this spill is at massive pressures FIVE MOTHERFUCKING THOUSAND FEET UNDER THE MOTHERFUCKING OCEAN. Do you realize what that means? They have to use robots to do everything because it would absolutely crush humans. Normal tools and methods cannot apply. You cannot plug this with socks, cap the well, replace the BOP, none of that. Bombing might work, but it has just as large of a chance of rupturing the ocean floor and causing an unending hellish release of oil.
Did BP/TransOcean fuck up with Deepwater Horizon? Yes. Were the shear rams, etc. poorly designed? Absolutely. Can a group of scrappy, untrained hackers with a dearth of information solve this from their armchairs? Most likely not.
Now, I’m sorry for being a massive asshat, but it needed to be said.
re: self. now that I think about it, they only banned me AFTER their internet was fixed. You’re all right, BP ARE total bastards! down with big energy!
@xorpunk: For someone who has a, dare I say it, *tentative* grasp of the English language, and who can scarcely read a patent you sure like to talk big. If I may use your own words: “do something or stfu..enough said”
This is aimed at everyone who is posting here that is missing the point of posting thoughtful, viable, and intelligent ideas and/or responses and are instead bashing on America, bashing on people bashing on America BP, Oil consumption, Environmentalists, God, etc., etc.–Why waste your thoughts and time on cutting eachother down and coming up with witty comebacks and put your mind power on a solution? Brainstorming doesn’t involve debate and the most seemingly insignifigant or silly idea may work as a catalyst to inspire a solution in someone elses mind. Just an idea…
lets nuke the bastard
I believe that it’s time to stop wasting all this effort on futile attempts to halt the flow of dinosaur juice. Instead, I propose razing all the oil platforms in the gulf as soon as possible to expedite the formation of the worlds largest oil storage facility.
Stop wasting time trying to get the oil out of the water and get on with the easier task of getting that useless H20 out of my fossil fuel.
We don’t even need to worry about scooping up the dead dolphins. After all, today’s rotting biomass is the oil of tomorrow.
Convenient, renewable oil for all!
Thank you BP.
@someone:They are about to implement my idea. Raise the hell out of fuel prices in America as payback for publicly criticizing their executives. Then get around to plugging their oil hole when they feel like it and continue with the semantics till then.
I think they should put a pipe that extends above the surface all the way to the ocean floor around the area the leak is in. By putting an inlet with valve in the side near the bottom and various valves as the pipe approaches the surface they would have a way to corral the oil, siphon it off, cap it, or whatever.
I’m not saying that BP aren’t the right people to fix this,.. I’m pretty sure they know better than all the “I have the internet, I’m an expert in any field I’m currently saying I’m an expert in” people that are in this thread saying “I would just do XYZ”.
But,.. I’m not sure you can say anything very favorable about BP’s scientists, engineers etc when they’ve let this huge fuck up happen in the first place.
The worst thing about this whole thing is all the idiots out in force with retarded banners. These people seem to lack any cognitive powers. It reminds me of a interview with a Climate Change protester that was at some summit against aviation.. Can you guess the method of transport given when the interviewer asked how the protester got from the UK to the US to be at said summit?
maybe the aztecs were right with their calendar…after all, this oil spill will probably decimate every fishing and tourism based economy in the caribbean sea and the gulf of mexico(which is pretty much all of them), and probably hit the atlantic fishing and beach tourism industries just as hard in the US. These countries will want to blame somebody, and while it might be easy to blame BP(they did it after all), it will most likely be the US that gets blamed primarily. Coupled with that the fact that Latin America is not too happy with us these days anyway, Russia, China and N Korea are all getting antsy, without even mentioning Iran and Pakistan. Seems to me we will have to worry about another Cuban missile crisis soon…hope they don’t start teaching duck and cover again…that was ridiculous..
@Nomad
I’m guessing most Americans would be smart enough to not base their argument on an urban legend.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
Next you’re going to try telling us that every person swallows 6 spiders a year in their sleep. Hint: that’s an urban legend, too.
I think that if they were to put a very large quantity of high explosive such as C4 by the leak then of course detonate it that would compress the ground enough to stop the leak
everything is radioactive.
just not in amounts or types of radiation that pose a threat. (ie. ionizing radiation)
i am not even halfway through reading the comments on this shit.
hot black oil on the surface of the ocean, is that really why its been so fucking hot every morning then rained every afternoon this week in mississippi?
yea thanks Min, that site doesn’t toss up a billion popups
(yea I know about the blocker scripts, but thanks for giving a free link to spam r us to everyone)
what Bill Siever said too, that was one idea worth mentioning. stick a pipe down the pipe and inflate a badass industrial strength balloon. then if the shit doesnt launch out and take your head off(okay there would probably be machines doing this) you can concrete and seal off the pipe, or you could repair the pipe i guess and pop the balloon but then you’re inviting failure back into the shituation
OIL is RADIOACTIVE and if you don’t believe it you can watch Star Trek episode 1256 where mr spock says xorpunk is a troll and should be banned and suck on my tiny malformed penile growth cuz ima no0b troll.
OK, so it seems nobody actually critiqued the proposed ‘hack’. There is one big issue I see. The cooling effect from liquid nitrogen comes from the expansion as it changes from liquid to gas. I.E. you took atmospheric nitrogen, spent a crap-ton of energy to compress it into a liquid, during which it released a lot of heat. When it expands again, it removes heat from its environment to do so.
Problem 1: Pressure. You will have a 1-mile high column of LN2 in your pipe on the ‘in’ side. You will also have a 1-mile high column of gaseous nitrogen on your ‘out’ side. In-between you’ll have a venturi restriction to allow the pressure difference. With the column of gaseous nitrogen you should have about a +5 PSI temperature gradient. Throw in the fact that you need to have a high flow rate and a reasonably-small pipe (compared to it’s 1-mile length) and the head should add another 2 PSI (hand-waving). Now you’re looking at a boiling point of about 180K (instead of 77 K). Not very good. I also didn’t take into account the possibility of any still-liquid nitrogen in your return flow, which will inevitably happen.
Problem 2: Specific heat. Sure, LN2 is pretty cold. But did you know you can actually dip your hand into a bucket of the stuff (for a few seconds)? It doesn’t take much energy to heat the stuff up. Now, take into account how much energy will be wasted due to poor insulation, then calculate the amount of LN2 required to freeze or at least thicken that amount of oil. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’m sure you’ll have to pump in at least as twice as much LN2 (by volume) as oil coming out. You’re not gonna’ be able to do this, sorry.
Nice try though!
If you dump “tons and tons of rocks” on top of it, the oil will still leak through in time, dump all the rocks you want… all you’ll do is add time until the leak is noticed… If you nuke it, there is a fine line between not being big enough to work and so big that it opens fissures where the oil will leak through.
Lets stop and think, we need good, unbiased geologists and hydrologists who are not on any “big company” payroll… Part of the problem is that the best ones are on their payroll.
I think the “angioplasty balloon” idea is interesting, but what would prevent the balloon from being forced out while it is being deployed and inflated? Think about fighting the pressure of a firehose spraying at you, but much larger.
Something tells me that disaster will definitely improve the next generation of ROV’s that come out. Start investing now.
how about a giant plastic bag full of liquid nitrogen weighted down by rocks on the sides.
my idea involved sealing off the area over the affected area itself, with a balloon that serves as a reservoir to capture oil, which is then siphoned to the surface from the balloon to prevent aforementioned balloon from bursting under pressure…more siphon lines can be added as time and materials permit(all paid for by bp of course), until a more permanent fix can be effected…had nothing to do with liquid nitrogen or any of these other ideas…like I said, would need either a constant stream of tankers on the surface to take the oil water mix away for separation, or an on-site surface storage facility…
jeez nibiru…you pretty much just summed up the last four ideas mixed into one…and badly…my idea involves temporary containment, with no guarantees of ultimate control…that control comes in when someone is smart enough to develop a single use tap line that bores itself into the pipe ahead of the leak and acts like an L valve to completely block off the output side of the pipeline while at the same time returning flow to the surface through new piping.
My angioplasty balloon idea would require a large weighted plate around the mouth of the balloon over the area…or perhaps a rolled end like a condom weighted with leadshot or some other heavy but evenly distributed material to hold down the perimeter of the mouth of the balloon and create a seal over a large enough perimeter around the leak that wreckage and uneven terrain doesn’t interfere. After that, with the flow controlled, a more permanent solution can be worked on upstream from the actual leak outside the perimeter of the balloon. This is just buying time, but at least it’s time where oil isn’t destroying economies and the environment.
The engineering difficulties of sending liquid nitrogen along a pipeline that long which is surrounded by dense and convective medium (seawater) are great.
It’s hard enough to transport that liquid along a modest pipe when surrounded by air. This would demand a vacuum jacket – and such items are not exactly stock for such a length.
Plus – as has been pointed out, the time during which the oil would loiter in the vicinity of the LN2 jacket is very short – it may simply not cool fast enough for it to slow such that it can cool faster, etc.
Still, kudos for lateral thought.
this stopping of oil at a mile down is brand new science they did not have a plan to stop a oil leak at this depth.they doing it by the seat of there pants.the law makers who let them drill at these depths should be tared and feathered and ran out of town
@All those people saying that all Americans aren’t fat lazy stereotypes.
Your precious democratic system Allowed Bush instead of a nobel prize winner to run your country. twice.
You then elected Obama an extremist whose family is not allowed in the UK due to rape convictions. your other choice was a Vietnam Veteran.
Why even bother defending yourselves, this rig was built and designed off shore only in the hands of Americans did it fail and no doubt the solution will be from someone who isn’t an america.
There are no specs on what the situation actually is. From what I gather it is not just a well pipe sticking out of the ocean floor, the bore hole is some distance away and there are leaks on the pipe connecting the actual drill hole to the BOP thing. I guess they drill holes and then connect them all up to some central point and pump from there, but they really don’t say a whole lot.
You can’t come up with a fix if no one knows the details.
some things that would probably help:
layout of the area including all the pipes
measurements on sizes of pipes
flow pressure from the source and where the main leak is
type of materials, thickness, diameter
environmental conditions, ambient temp, temp of the oil coming out, pressure
And probably a bunch of other things.
Without any of this information speculating fixes is pointless. It’s like saying “my car won’t drive anywhere. How do I fix it?”
I’m would guess that these aren’t dumb guys that are just trying random things to try and fix it, its just a difficult problem.
Off topic, did anyone here read about the mud well in Indonesia? That is a disaster thats been going on for a very long time and still isn’t fixed.
Firstly, “top kill” is not a silly name they thought of just for this job, it’s a procedure that’s been done many times before!
Was going to write a rather tedious response to all the “block the pipe” ideas, glad to see jdog’s response who did it for me.
To re-cap: this is a bigger issue than just plugging up a hole – well itself may be compromised, with weak or ruptured casing far below the damaged BOP. This has happened on other jobs, in which formation pressures exceed the designed (or weakened) cementing/casing setup, meaning that the well bore is not the only path for leaks to escape – the earth itself comes apart (disclaimer: I’m thinking of land jobs, mostly gas, I never worked offshore).
This is why the relief wells are so important; if they can reach the same target zone in the right place, they may be able to divert flow in a controlled manner to reduce the pressures in the damaged well to a point where another top kill/plug attempt could work.
it’s hard for me to think of LA as Lousiana :(
@boostlord
“Why waste your thoughts and time on cutting eachother down and coming up with witty comebacks and put your mind power on a solution?”
Because nobody cares what a bunch of commenters on Hackaday think. BP doesn’t give a shit about you, me, the US, and anyone else who will be affected by this disaster.
BUT
If I can convince one SUV driving asshole to cut back on their consumption then that’s a small victory that actually has an impact
you wouldn’t have to have direct contact w/ oil to freeze it . I
can’t someone just come up with some sort special shield for the arduino to stop this? everyone knows they are the universal solution to any problem.
you wouldn’t have to have direct contact w/ oil to freeze it . IF you freeze the ground around the pipe it will choke the pipe shut.How to do this is another question.
an arduino-powered ROV will deploy a swarm of zigbee connected lilypad arduino microbots that will stuff the BOP with back issues of MAKE….everyone wins
The only comment I have is to those that say the brightest minds on the planet are working in it. Hmm, sounds a lot like those brilliant engineers everday working on security that some of the guys around here break for fun. Don’t confuse education and status with intelligence.
So if I have read everything correctly the top area is uneven and very hard to maneuver around in order to get at the top. Why not implode the top in on itself. sure it may not prevent alot of oil that is escaping to get out but it should plug it. Think about it” place charges drilled into holes surrounding the area the oil is spewing out from at 100 foot intervals. have these charges rigged for a 2 millisecond delay from the deepest to the top. the explosion and the resulting debris should filling the hole and plug it up.
My idea is along the same lines as Bill Siever’s.
But trying to inflate some sort of balloon before the pressure in the well pushes it back out would be tough to accomplish. You would need to inflate it very fast. But if you could get the balloon below the well, into the reservoir, you wouldn’t have to worry about it being pushed out while being inflated. Plus it would create a plug which would be pushed at the well. You do need to overcome the static pressure inside the reservoir to inflate the device. As for the device, I am picturing an umbrella shape. Inverted, the ‘top’ would be facing down, and a balloon would be on the other side. The center post would be a 1″ hollow drill tube, say a few hundred feet in length attached to a flex tube going to a pump. Let’s also imagine a one way valve at the very tip on the device. Inserting into the well is the tough part. You need to overcome the pressure to get it started down. Is the pressure of the well 3.5k to 6k psi atmospheric pressure? Assuming it is atmospheric, what is the pressure at 5k feet below the water’s surface? To be able to insert the end of this device into the pressurized well, it would be required suction out of the pipe at a flow rate sufficient to get the pipe inserted and enough of it down the well to let gravity do the work (this is the purpose of the one way valve at the end). One it is determined to be in the reservoir and out of the well (pressure or flow rate decreases) the suction can be reversed and heavy mud can be pumped down with the required force to inflate the balloon, which in turn opens the umbrella. When fully inflated, the device can be slowly raised until it plugs the leak. At this time concrete should be piped into the well to create the plug.
It’s just an idea.
@jdog,
You seem to know a lot. You are wrong, however. Lead shot will sink because of it’s specific gravity being 11.34 times that of water. Even the amount of pressure that is down there will not be able to push all of the lead shot out of the well. Or try Depleted Uranium. It has a specific gravity of 19.278 times that of water. Pick your poison, IT WILL SINK.
If the blowout preventer is as mangled as you say, CUT IT OFF!!! Use a die on the pipe below the BOP. Then screw a collar onto the pipe. Next, cement the sucker shut. Put a new christmas tree and a new BOP onto it.
You, in theory should be able to put a new christmas tree onto the well when the tree is open. Once you get it on you close it.
FYI: I was basing my solution of putting a new christmas tree on it from the photos that the national news was providing.
Are you one of the people working on the well??
This one may be a little off the wall, but I’ll throw it out there so that the trolls can mercilessly tear it down ;-)
My thought was, microwave technology is used to vibrate and split apart water molecules. Therefore, would it be possible to tweak the frequency of the microwave emitter and use it to target the oil molecules, breaking them apart into lighter weight components that may be ecologically safer or at least would evaporate, etc. easier. Again, it’s out there a bit, but it seemed like it could be useful to help mitigate collateral damage.
Also, do we have admins? Can somebody go ahead and ban xorpunk and octel? That would really improve the discussion around here but eliminating wastes of life. Thanks.