Top kill wont stop Gulf of Mexico oil spill

The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill is perhaps the worst environmental disaster of the 21^st century but it also underscores the need for some creative thinking to solve this dilemma.

The problem is a 21 inch pipe or “riser” which has sheared off and fallen like a limp noodle on the sea floor 1500 meters or almost a mile down. The riser is still connected by a flange to the wellhead, but there is a huge open crack in the riser just above the flange. Oil and gas pours from this crack, and, to a lesser extent, from the open end of the broken riser lying on the sea floor.

What surprises me is the wellhead, which appears to be intact and fully operational, appears to have no valves built into it to shut off the flow of oil. Given the real possibility that the pipe or riser could shear off, you would think that every underwater wellhead would have this capability.

The first attempt to stem the leak involved a huge containment structure being dropped over the broken end of the riser sitting on the sea floor. The containment structure included a new riser which could suck up the leaking oil and gas through its domed top. This containment structure failed because of gas hydrate ice crystals blocking its oil riser recovery pipes.

Next a method called “Top Kill” was used to seal the leak on top of the wellhead. In this method a couple of 3” hoses were connected to the wellhead. The hoses were connected at the other end to a special manifold. The manifold could pump thick mud through the hoses from a riser connected to a supply ship on the surface. It also could pump “Junk” or bits of rope, golf balls and other assorted garbage as a means of clogging the open crack at the top of the wellhead.

Top Kill failed presumably because it the pressure was so great that the “Junk” and mud were just blasted through the open crack and nothing managed to gum up the well head enough to stem the flow.

The next solution involves using remote controlled vehicles to operate a shear, to pinch off the end of the riser lying on the sea floor. Another robot submarine will use a diamond wire cutter which will sit on the flange on top of the well head and neatly cut off the riser just above the flange.

Once the riser is cut off, a giant “bottlecap” device will be lowered onto the cleanly cut pipe stub while the oil and gas pours out through the open wellhead under intense pressure. To combat the formation of gas hydrate crystals again, the “bottlecap has a methane injection system.

The real problem is going to be stabilizing the bottlecap while the oil is pouring out. Its like trying to stuff a cork into a running firehose. The power of the flowing oil is going to shove the bottlecap away every time the robots try to position it. The remote control submarines dont have anywhere near the power to hold the cap in place and secure it.

This problem is hard enough to imagine solving a mile beneath the sea, with unimaginable pressures to deal with. My own idea would be to fabricate a steel lance with rubber bladders attached to it. Sort of a giant foley catheter if you will. The lance would be pushed into the open wellhead after the riser had been cut off.

The lance might be easier to push into the wellhead against the pressure of the oil. Once the lance was pushed into the wellhead deep enough, a clamp would secure it against the existing wellhead flange and the bladders would be inflated with hydraulic cement pumped from the surface until the wellhead pipe was completely sealed.

I dont know if my idea would work, but it seems easier to implement given the enviroment a mile below the ocean surface. Hopefully the engineers at BP can come up with a solution quickly, as the scope of this disaster increases with each passing day. And who knows what new problems will surface as long as oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.

CAD industry to make modest recovery in 2010

Jon Peddie research is a firm in California that focuses on market research in the graphics and CAD industry. They recently released a report detailing the state of the CAD industry in the USA for the past few years and made some predictions as to where it's going.

While the report details problems such as workers leaving the industry, it talks about opportunities that are already presenting themselves in 2010:

"As difficult as the recession in 2009 has been and will continue to be for many companies, it will serve as a jump start for long term growth as many companies take the time afforded by a slow down to move to advanced technologies and retrain workers."

Cleaning baghouses is a "green" job ?

I've been involved in the baghouse and dust collector industry for almost 10 years, sizing and designing and drafting this equipment. I work closely with the crews that do bag changes and baghouse cleaning but I have never thought of this as a "Green" job.

Apparently the US Government does, and companies are receiving green industry stimulus funding for it. This newspaper article talks about how some baghouse workers maybe being taken advantage of through this by being asked to work without proper protective equipment.