Yet another idea on how to capture the oil and get it into a tanker.

[ladjf]

The problems:

1.The well head is a mile below the surface creating several related problems.

2. The connection can't be sealed tightly due to the ragged cut.

3. Methane gas is icing up in the collectors.

4. The steel casings and the underlying rock formations are leaking and are in danger of failing completely which means even if the BOP had worked, it could have caused a complete blowout of the sea bottom that is around the well head and below.

Possible solution:

A funnel shaped collection receptacle then when fully expanded at the mouth, say 40 to 50' across
that graduates to a large pipe of 60 to 100 inches in diameter all the way up to the surface pumping ship.

The key to making this work is to never attempt to hook up the collector to the well head but rather
be wide enough to capture all of the flow that is coming out of the cut pipe. The collector could be 30 or more feet above the cap and still catch all of the spill. The collector mouth would need to be tethered to the bottom for control. The combination of the funnel diameter and the spacing from the cap would accomplish four essential tasks, (1)it would catch the oil/gas mixture, (2) avoid ice formation ,(3) significantly reduce the main artesian pressure at the cap and (4) put no extra pressure on the damaged casing and rock formations.

When the catcher is in place, large surface pumps would work in concert with the natural pressure
directing the flow straight up the large collection pipe which is wide enough to hold the oil without
undue flow restriction.

When the initial flow begins to reach the surface, the mixture of captured oil/gas would also include sea water that was caught in the upward draft at the mouth of the collector. Once the flow
is up to speed, the diameter of the collector mouth should be reduced (flaps that slide into each other to reduce the diameter) under the guidance of the ROVs down to a diameter that still capturing the leaking oil/gas but almost no ambient seawater.

On the surface, other tankers are on standby to replace the filled tanker.

I see no reason why this technique wouldn't work. And if this idea won't work, somebody ,somewhere
will be able to figure out how to capture the 21" column of lethal oil and gas.

Flame away my DU colleagues.

[MrMickeysMom]

1. Have you sent suggestion on?

I've gotten two responses so far from the Deep Water Horizon team, or some such thing thanking me for my entry. I was all abuzz telling people about the site some weeks back.

It sounds like a good thing to pass on.

[ladjf]

2. I attempted to send several ideas to BP but was completely

ignored. nt

[virgdem]

8. I read on DU several weeks back that the EPA...

was accepting ideas. Perhaps you could try sending your idea to them and hopefully BP will pay attention to them, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

[WeDidIt]

3. That's actually a pretty clever idea. n/t

[ladjf]

5. Thanks. My setup was somewhat based on a description

that I heard on TV last week. A gentleman who was the President of an oil reclamation company said
that his boats lowered an umbrella shaped collector over the leak and pumped the oil into a tanker.

I've heard nothing else from him or about his idea so I thought I might add my details and post it.

[snot]

4. I've been wondering about this, too.

I'm worrying that the dispersants -- even if they presented no hazard in themselves, and they probably do -- are actually just making it harder to corrall oil that will continue to cause problems.

A similar alternative would be to try to use a variety of materials to channel the oil toward a certain limited area on shore. As much as we don't like it on our shore, it seems it would actually be easier to collect and dispose of or even recover on land than dispersed underwater.

[Bitwit1234]

6. I think that teen aged girl with the expanding rubber bands

to seal the leak is also a good idea. They ought to give it a try.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Kind of like a giant, upside down beer bong, eh?

They should try it. Whatever they're doing now sure isn't working. :thumbsup:

[ladjf]

12. Yes, or like a stop-top vent that sucks the smokey air from off

of the stove.

[XemaSab]

9. I saw a similar suggestion for cutting a ship in half

and lowering it over the leak.

It's definitely time to get MacGuyver on the thing.

[csziggy]

10. It's when the sea water mixes with the methane that the icing occurs

So you do not want a collector that is wide open like you describe at the bottom. They have a new cap on the way from what I have been reading. The one that is in place has been working fairly well, but the seals at the bottom have torn loose. The new cap is custom built to fit around th ragged top of the BOP with allowance for the lean of the BOP - it is now leaning at about 10% or better.

At various times over the last week, they have been collecting differing amounts of the flow from the well. the night before the rig was struck by lightning, they were collecting nearly all of the flow. But they have to allow some leakage to prevent pulling in seawater which will cause the methane ice to form in the cap or the pipe, which would clog the flow. One of the big problems seems to be that the flow varies in strength and consistency very widely, depending on how much gas is mixed with the oil and other factors I have not seen discussed over on The Oil Drum.

Currently the plan is to put the better cap on, attach some of the other pipes on the BOP to a manifold to capture more of the flow:
http://bp.concerts.com/gom/kentwellstechnicalupdate061010a.htm

Or if you do not want to listen to BP's propaganda, look at the diagrams at the beginning of this closed thread on The Oil Drum. Some technical information about the situation, but very interesting: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6611

[ladjf]

13. My theory was that by having a very wide funnel mouth, the

methane would be somewhat diluted by the large quantity of ambient sea water, causing a slushy mixture
that would still move up the funnel to the 100" return pipe, which I believe would be large enough
to handle the slush mixture.

I don't know the adiabatic rate of warming for sea water, but my guess is that within 500 to 1000 feet from the bottom, the temperature would have risen enough to melt the methane/sea water slush.

[csziggy]

15. The original contaiment clogged up immediately and it was huge

Since it had originally been designed as a protective cofferdam for protecting installations when Katrina was on the way. Any bigger than that and I doubt the technology exists to move it.

The other problem is pure volume - there is a huge amount of oil coming out of that well. Enough that they are using two collection points to accumulate the oil and still have to have regular transfers to move it off. And they are talking about burning it since the capacity to keep up with the flow rate is overwhelming and adding to the traffic problem above the well head. So mixing in a lot of sea water will just make that problem worse.

[ladjf]

16. For some reason not clear to me, the outlet pipe of the first

large catchment device had a very small outlet pipe. It appeared to have a diameter of just a few inches. I assumed that the small outlet pipe was the location of the methane blockage.

I had in mind a catch hood large enough to capture all of the flow then graduate the size upward until the water temperature was warm enough to melt the methane slush. Also as the flow speed picked up to a full terminal rate, the opening aperture over the well head would be reduced so as to minimize the capture of surrounding sea water.

[SlipperySlope]

11. Can't really pump from 5,000 feet up

I've seen somewhat similar suggestions commented on by the guys over at the oil drum.

Basically, any solution that relies on "pumping" the oil up from the surface won't work. There aren't pumps strong enough to lift a column of water 5000 feet. The current cap relies completely on the pressure of the oil coming out of the hole to force the oil up, not pumps to pull it up.

[ladjf]

14. Maybe true for the exact configuration I described. However,

the artesian pressure may well be enough to overcome the resistance of the up pipe so that no pumping would be necessary. But, it that wasn't enough, the up pipe could be branched into several
smaller pipe via a header, with each header having it's own pump.

My point is that the flow issuing from the existing well head could be captured in some sort of
overhead umbrella type shroud. Once it is collected in the device, it then becomes a matter of standard hydraulics to lift the captured substance out of the Gulf.

We are talking about a 20" opening at the well head. Surely some engineer somewhere can figure out a method of saving the Gulf and all of it's inhabitants from being annihilated.

[Kip Humphrey]

17. I've been trying to garner interest in just such an engineered solution at work for a month now

A all-purpose 100% containment vessel of sufficient size to fit over any X-tree and wellhead,

with a footprint large enough to capture a full wellbore blowout,

engineered with methenol/chemocal injection

equipped with a full array of gauges and metering

anchored to the seafloor with mudline piles

with multiple risers capable of 100K boe per day capture

valved to control flow rate

that is splash-ready and deployable within 12 hours of a subsea leak or blowout

During the 6 month moratorium, GOM oil company engineers could very well come together and conduct a fast-track project to engineer through detailed design such a containment device. The capability and capacity already exists; we already deploy subsea manifolds the size of 3-bedroom houses.


No takers yet but I'm building consensus among the subsea engineering community at work that such a device is necessary, needed, and achievable. I've found that giving engineers a solvable problem inevitably leads to their inability to stop thinking about how to solve that problem.

[Oilwellian]

18. My friend has been trying to get this idea out there for 2 weeks now

It can be up and running within a few days.

(With permission to post entire Overview)

Overview

The Oil Duct Project is a collaborative effort to stop the Deep Water Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with a remarkably simple, temporary solution that will "corral" the oil and channel it to the surface where it can be recovered. Depending on resources thrown at the project, the device can be built and deployed in or week or two, and very inexpensively (relatively speaking). It has already been vetted by two licensed drilling engineers, who can offer no reasons why it would not work, as described below.



The concept employs a tube made of flexible high density polyethylene sheeting that is loosely draped over a high tension cable armature running from the well head at the sea floor, straight up through the hull of a drill ship at the surface. Standard drill rig winches on the ship provide the necessary tension on the armature that keeps the tubing membrane open and aligned. A conical-shaped flaring occurs at the bottom so that the tube can widen sufficiently around the equipment at the well head.



In operation, the duct will channel oil and gas as it escapes from the well bore, directing it to the top of the well site where it can be pumped to container ships. Thus, rather than trying to only pump the oil through the existing LMRP and riser pipe unit, as BP is doing now, any of the oil not captured will simply float to the surface through the duct. Since the oil cannot escape the duct, it cannot escape into the open ocean. Since the duct is an open system, there are minimal pressure differentials between the inside and outside of the duct; hence no "crushing" of the duct can result from the extreme pressures at the extreme depths where the well bore is located. The duct is much more like a chimney than a pipe. Permeable fiber vents are embedded along the length of the duct which vent the natural gas trying to expand as it rises, thus allowing it to harmlessly pass into the open ocean (we are not trying to recover any gas from this defective well).



The entire Oil Duct design can be deployed right over the existing LMRP and other production devices, allowing those fatally flawed solutions to keep operating until the duct is ready to take over.



There are no engineering challenges in the design. The goal from the outset was to arrive at a simple solution which could be built with off-the-shelf and mostly local materials and methods—and in only a few days. Even the key materials have already been sourced from vendors who can deliver them to the job site immediately.



The haste is essential if it is to arrive in time to prevent enormous further damage to the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the shorelines and fishing industries of the Gulf States, and perhaps the eastern seaboard as well.


Important Updates and Conceptual Aids

* On June 10th, this concept was submitted to the Unified Command. On June 15th, a follow-up latter was sent to Admiral James A. Watson, the Federal On-Scene Commander. Admiral Watson Letter1. We are awaiting a response.
* Further down this page, you can see a video of another device called the "Squid" which demonstrates the core principles employed in the Oil Duct.
* @shoq posts the Oil Duct, and comments on Eric Lewis's alternative design at Daily Kos.


The Design

Note: This is a reduced drawing just for reference. See link below for full-sized PDF drawing.



The basic concept is quite simple.

This technical design drawing and the artist's rendering at the top of this page should illustrate the apparatus for most people. Anyone with a basic mechanical sense should be able to follow the extended description of how it all works below:

1. An 85 foot high cone-shaped "cage" made of epoxy coated metal tubing will be fabricated and lowered over the existing Blowout Preventer. The 18 foot diameter base of this cone will be anchored to the sea floor using existing seabed anchor technology.
2. Six guide line wire ropes (plastic coated, 1.4 inch steel cables already used at the drill site) will be fastened to the base, and run through holes in the second 18 foot diameter ring, and the smaller 6 foot diameter ring at the top of the conically shaped cage. The guide lines continue on about 5,000 feet to the surface where they will pass through the moon pool opening in the drill ship above.
3. The ropes are not yet "taut," but are merely ready to be made so in later steps.
4. Next, over the wire armature will be draped the actual duct tube. This is a 6 foot in diameter tube, fashioned from 40 mil high density polyethylene plastic (HDPE) that is already available from a Texas vendor of Landfill Liner in sufficient quantities for this project.
* The vendor has agreed to provide 3 heat sealing technicians and heat sealing equipment to make the tube from material delivered to the site on 556 foot rolls. (All 20 rolls required are already available, and can be air freighted to the Gulf in a matter of hours).
* Stretched out on a local aircraft runway, or any suitably large plot, about 10 people using portable heat sealing guns will then perforate and embed fiberglass mesh discs into the liner panel. These serve as the permeable vents which let natural gas escape to the sea, while leaking only nominal amounts of oil (if any). It is important to remember that we don't care about recovering the gas. Only that it not expand and rupture the duct.
* Finally, the vendor's techs will make one long heat weld along the length, turning the 19' foot wide liner bolt into a roughly 6 foot diameter tube.
* At the bottom of the tube, a small "skirt" will be fastened, made of the same liner material. This will serve as the conical portion of the duct that drapes the cage on the sea floor.
* Note: please bear in mind that computer models may show that any number of permeable fabrics can be used instead of the polyethylene material, thus eliminating the need for vents and greatly simplifying duct fabrication.
5. To prepare the duct for deployment, it will be "scrunched" up (like a collapsible cup, perhaps 20 feet high), so that that it can be fitted over the existing riser pipe assembly now passing through the moon pool opening in the drill ship, and a top ring of the guide line armature. After it's in position, the leading edge of the six guide lines will pass through the compressed duct, and be attached to the six winches on the deck of the drill ship.
6. With the collapsed duct in position, the winches on deck will pull the guide lines taut, thus forming our trumpet shaped "armature," consisting of the cage at the bottom, and the six cables running to the surface above, passing through the duct to the winch drums.
7. Grasping the ballasted leading edge of the duct, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) will then "pull" the duct down over the armature wires, taking it straight down over the cage and gushing well bore on the sea floor.
* Since the duct is a loosely fit open system, and there is no attempt to constrict or enclose the gusher, the intense pressure coming from the well is not an issue.
* Since ocean currents below 100 meters are minor, the lateral drag on the duct material will be nominal. At most, only a few feet of deflection on the guy wires is expected, and the dynamic positioning thrusters on the drill ship will simply burn a larger than normal amount of fuel as they compensate for the drag.
* The guide line wires are coated in Xylan, so friction will not appreciably wear on the duct membrane, and no stabilizing spreaders should be needed on the guy ropes to keep them in alignment. Since aesthetics are irrelevant, some twisting and deformity of the tube are expected, as well.
8. If engineers feel the vents are not enough to prevent hydrates, existing methanol feed hoses can be attached to the skirt. Methanol injected into the tube will prevent the dreaded hydrates from forming in the rising oil, thus preventing frozen ice crystal blockages from appearing in the duct.
9. Once the duct is in place and operating, the 50% of the oil not being captured by the existing LMRP system will rise to the surface through the duct where surface pumps will transfer it to container ships.
10. In the event of a hurricane, the top of the duct can be detached from the ship, and collapsed downward about 100 meters and "floated" well below the storm currents using existing diesel bag technology. After the storm passes, it is simply reattached and production continues.



That's it. Mechanically, it's very simple. The cost is under $5 million dollars (ropes, cage, duct and labor). The engineering is basic stuff, and any remaining fastening and deployment details can be worked out by any major engineering firm probably already hard at work on this problem. All they need is the permission to go do it.



The entire concept has been designed for ease of fabrication, which could start as soon as the design is approved.



See Execution Page for more details of the implementation plan concept and Timeline.

Current Status



June 15th — follow-up latter was sent to Admiral James A. Watson, Federal On-Scene Commander. Admiral Watson Letter1

June 14th, 2010 — This Wiki has been polished, and a letter is being sent to Rear Admiral James A. Watson, the Federal On-scene Coordinator.

June 11th, 2010 — This Wiki was started to better facilitate the many texts and collaborations in process.

June 10th, 2010 — The device has been submitted to the Unified Command.

June 8th, 2010 — @jgrindal and @shoq are finishing a computer aided drawing of the entire device. We hope to submit to the official @BP_America suggestion queue by day's end. A number of political contacts are being sought to expedite a proper hearing for the concept, and not rely on what may be a very bureaucratic corporate process that is trying to review thousands of ideas, many of them concerned only with the containment and cleanup, and not trying to actually reduce the flow from the well bore itself.

The devil is always in those details

We are trying to have enough of the engineering issues and materials detailed so that anyone, and especially BP, Incident Commander Thad Allen, and the White House, can all see that the idea is simple, viable, and could be deployed NOW. If the BP task force suggestion team doesn't get it—or get it fast enough—yet have not shot it down on technical grounds, we will put it out to the larger engineering community and media and let social networking and crowd pressure get it the attention we feel it deserves.

There is no time to waste.

The current LMRP is not capturing the amount of oil BP is suggesting. Drilling experts agree that because they must pump the oil up the riser pipe, they are actually drawing more oil from the well. Thus, while they are capturing more oil at the surface, the suction is drawing more oil from the well, which only leaks more crude from the LMRP cap in the now familiar gusher that the world sits by and watches each day on video. It must be stopped. And right now.

History

On the night of June 6th, @shoq mused openly about the basic idea with his @Twitter stream. He began working on the idea with @jgrindal, a licensed drilling engineer working for a Houston-based vendor working with BP to stop the leak. (Justin was aboard the Q4000 drilling rig platform during the ill-fated "Top Kill" operation.) A number of volunteers then got on board, and have been assisting with the design and resourcing of the idea. It's a true crowd-based collaboration, enabled by Twitter.



Shortly after they began, someone discovered a similar—if not identical— concept had been posted on DailyKos a few weeks ago by Eric Lewis. Eric called this an Oil Corral (Permeable Cone Stocking). @shoq comments on Eric's design in detail, here.



While the Lewis design relies on the same core idea of letting the oil float topside within a contained conduit, the @shoq/@jgrindal concept—called "Oil Duct" — is structurally much simpler, and designed to be fabricated with mostly existing drill rig equipment already on station at or near the drill site.



The biggest difference between them is in the details of the #corral conduit itself. The Oil Duct #corral concept is designed to be built and deployed in only a few days.

If You Want To Help

* Just join the #corral stream on Twitter by tweeting to it.
* If you have political and media contacts, please let @shoq know of them (very soon).
* If you have Facebook presence, and wish to extend #corral there, it would be helpful.
* If you know drilling or mechanical engineers, please direct them to this page and effort.
* Keep reloading this page for updates (particularly to this section).
* Tweet @shoq with anything else you think might help.


http://oilduct.pbworks.com/FrontPage