Using Standard Sand Bags to Stop Oil Leak

I don't think you comprehend the scale of the problem or the physics.
A 100lb sandbag doesn't exert much down force once it's in the water, as the volume of water it displaces weighs almost as much as the sand.
I'm sure they have been brainstorming ideas for some time now. I'm sure that if it was in say 100foot of water they'd have fixed it by now...but its a long way down.
Del

Also, don't forget that that the oil is at a much higher pressure down where it is..

about 90 to 100 pcf dry unit weight, minus the 62.4 pcf for water (actually this is a little higher at the depths they are talking about due to compression of the water). So the effective submerged weight of the sand is about 27 to 37 pcf. Plus sand is fairly porous, and the contact points between the bags are an issue for leakage also.

Each one hundred pound bag has the added weight of all the water that exists in an imaginary column directly on top of it. 10 million sandbags will do the trick.

Actually no it does not have the added column of water on top of it. The sand bags are permeable and displace water, so it has the effect of displacing water equivalent to its volume at the depth it exist (and after some point of compaction the sand will become less compressible than water). The effects of the overbruden pressures from the water column only apply when the unit you are describing in impermeable, relative to underlying geologic formations, to the water overburden and can resist the infiltration head as that water seeks to migrate downwards. If the underlying ocean floor is less permeable than the sand then you effectively burn head pressures, and the flow velocities are substantially reduced, off at the ocean floor and not in the sand bags. the very low flow velocities then in the sand bags would not burn substantial velocity head from the downward moving water column as it moves into the subsurface. Sand bags at the bottom of the ocean are the same as sand bags in the middle of the ocean for the most part (except the water is more compressed deeper, as are the sand bags). The actual effect that you need to calculate for is the bouyancy of the sand bags as they displace water.

Good point about the weight of sand verses water. My thought was when all the sand bags were bundled together the mass of the bundle would not displace enough water and it would sink to the bottom.

What you are saying is, a bundle of sand bags weighting 10,000 pounds will float at some depth, before it reached the bottom?

Roy

No. At any depth, the sandbags will have negative buoyancy of (specific gravity of sand minus specific gravity of seawater). However, the pressure and velocity of the emerging oil will deflect the sandbags away from the oil stream, always leaving one or more paths open.

What you are saying is, a bundle of sand bags weighting 10,000 pounds will float at some depth, before it reached the bottom?

No it prob won't actually float, but it won't have much downforce. (I can't be bothered to do the arithmetic) Get a brick and a bucket of water if you want to see for yourself.
Del

Dry Sand Relative density is 1.5 to 1.7.

Saline water almost 1.03 (the effect of pressure as you go down will be in 100s of bars and that may bring the RD to almost 1.1

So the nett will be only 0.4 and then there will be all types of disturbing factors like convection currents (and whales and _penguines ).

Send a robot to repair.

What am I missing, sea water weights 72 lbs per cf and wet sand weights 120 lbs per cf. If we have 100 cf of sand and displace 100 cf of sea water we would have a downward weight of 4,800 lbs. If that is not enough weight, we add an inverted steel box over the sand that protrudes from the open bottom of the box to conform to the pipe and sea floor to act as a seal. The weight of the steel box would add 49,000 lbs giving a total of 61,000 lbs of downward force.

Roy H.

You can not count the weight of water in wet sand, use the dry weight of sand about 100 pcf to 110 pcf at maximum practical compaction since the water in the sand is neutral bouyant to possible positive bouyant if fresh water (low salinity). (Loose sand would weigh less per unit volume.) Also each individual bag is not 100 cf, so each bag is subjected to individual disturbance effects during installation and placement.

It looks like we have some anger issues here compounded by bitterness

Okay so they've estimated four million gallons of crude has leaked. 4,000,000 right. In one cubic foot (volume) there is about 7.4 gallons. Doing the math 4,000,000 / 7.5 = 533,333 cubic feet. Okay. What size box can hold 533,333 cubic feet?  Well, we can take the cube root and get a box 81' x 81' x 81'.  That volume seems managable.    Don't want to use a box? How about a balloon?  We can take our volume and work the formula of a sphere to get the radius. V = 4/3 x pi x r x r.   A balloon with a 50 foot radius (100 foot diameter) could hold all the oil spilt so far.  Just capture it in these BillyBalls and then reclaim the oil instead of fouling the Gulf.

Sorry. Spherical volume = (4/3)πr³.

Some earlier estimates of the leakage equated to about 150 gpm. More recently we hear of 10x that, about 1500 gpm. None of this is easily verified, but at the maximum of this range, and 20 days of leakage, the spherical balloon would need to contain 20 x 1440 x 1500 ÷ 7.481 ≈ 5,800,000 ft³. Hence r ≈ 111 ft.

I'm not exact on whether this is yesterday, today, or tomorrow; it's just a thumbnail calc anyway. Nor do I know how to place an envelope of this size onto the sea floor. Some good generalists, such as Red Adair, Bill Moss, and Christo Javacheff, might be able to help, but not all of these guys are available....

Yup I missed a x r in my notes.

Is there method in the madness?...

Check out railway gradients, to use railway wagons to relocate old steel reinforced concrete buildings, to The Gulf Of Mexico, dump this rubbish over the oil well head, and build an island???-- pressure of oil maybe dealt with by sheer mass of rubble? Seepage locally fixed or ignored...

5,000 ft deep admittedly.

Low precision, quick and dirty! Cheap? Quick?

Use island for farming bio-diesel as per Wikipedia piece to grow sea-algae, said to be possible, overall.

The end of ugly buildings-- ethical too?

Stuart.

U.K.

Not signed in.

What about sealing the casing? Send tube into casing and expand a bladder with dry nitrogen. Remove the tube, cap the pipe.

A couple of good ol boys.

Leave it to the creative American minds to come up with a simple solution to help reduce a serious problem.

Do you suppose these creative people discovered this without EPA approval and assistance??

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil/

First, this idea of sand bags is due some credit. Problem 1, not only are we attempting to contain crude oil and its solids, but escaping gases. If the sand were combined with some mud formulas and/or chunks that remain moderately flexable for a period of time that would allow delivery as well as somewhat solidifiy after positioning and maybe a bond of sorts would occur with the sea floor. Which by the way is fluid as well. Five tons would only be a begining. Then enters problem 3, deployment and positioning. The ambulatory isses of remote operation are poor at best. Given that the process could be repeated often enough to at least stem the flow until positive measures could be implemented. ROV pinching off the pipe or connecting with a hose already pumping faster than the estimated flow to overcome the pressure differential. Concider the conditions and the objective before forming a plan. Keeping in mind, that what you do, may have to be undone for the final solution. Remember that when you are up to your ass in alligators. The original objective was to drain the swamp!

Sandbags WILL STOP the leak! Hi...I'm new here. I am an inventor from NJ and I found this site as I searched the net for any other thoughts on sandbags to stop the oil leak.

Sandbags MUST work eventually it is simple physics, but not some of the ways thought here. We first want to DIVERT the leak to weaken it and then slowly SLOW the leak with sandbags...a MILLION of them bagged by probably volunteers as well as some giant sandbags.

It MUST work...we could build a 5000ft tall mountain of sandbags on top of that oil leak! Creating an "anthill" that could even be drillable again!

I would rip all the broken engineering off the top of that well though to do this. Leave just the pipe "flush" with the bottom and then guide sandbags down...no nets as that may disturb seal. RAIN sandbags until the leak stops....this MUST work...it's simple physics.

Thanks for reading my thoughts. I like this place. Talk again!...one last thing...I have been to BP headquarters pitching two safety inventions a few years ago. They made me watch all these safety videos and attend a lengthy safety class just to walk down the office hall to sit in an office with engineers! I thought the degree of safety was WAYYYY overboard and so did most there but they said that is the way it is (extreme measures of safety at BP headquarters)

Ron Komorowski

Inventor of Handi-Straps

One thing to do is calculate the submerged weight of sand bags against the submerged weight of concrete, knowing that a concrete box already failed to provide sufficient overburden pressure to retain the release. Bear in mind each individual sand bag can move relative to the whole and be displaced by localized pressures or flows (concrete box could not). In essence you can imagine scaling this down to a water hose with a spray nozzle on it and you are piling individual grains of sand (representative of a sand bag though it assumes a much lower permeability) until you stop the flow. then try the same thing underwater and see what happens. Just trying to position the sand properly becomes a huge problem. Scale it to something like 1:1000 would be appropriate. That would equate to a sand bag of approximately 1/3 cf to a very fine sand approaching silt size (about 0.008 inches in diameter) being place on a leak (hose with a spray nozzle) at the bottom of a 5 foot deep pool to stop the discharge from the leak. You would still need to scale the currents to reflect the much stronger ocean currents which are not present in a pool. Another way to think of it, which is somewhat overly simplified to make it obvious, is to scale it to dropping a feather through the air from a second story roof onto a air vent. How many feathers would be required to stop the air flow, and how much area would you end up covering. submerged sand bags will hold a roughly 2:1 slope in water unless teathered together (maybe slightly less). So a 5,000 foot high pile of bags would extend over a diameter of 20,000 feet at the base, assuming everything could be placed efficiently on the pile and not drift at all due to currents and pressure variations. This is equivalent to 524,000,000,000 cubic feet of sand (or roughly 30,000,000,000 tons of sand). That is a lot of sand. Guess you could move all the Florida Beaches.

You guys are way more technical than me. I wonder how I see things like I do in inventing without being able to understand or execute formulas like you but I see it like this:

We have drilled a hole in the earth that broke. Their proposed golf balls and tire shreds are not going to work as well as just sealing that hole with earth, the way it was.

Sand is crushed rock and in abundance. The only other type of earth we can think off is iron ore, or cement, a natural composite formulated but cement can crack easy enough and may crack under it's own weight...then what? Sand is best for plugging this hole.

Rip out the broken blowout preventor as the only thing it's preventing is a fix! Fill area with sandbags. Again, first purpose or attempt is to divert the pressure, spread it, so the sandbags can eventually have a chance.

Even volunteers could load many ships with sandbags and they can be directed down the depths in easy enough ways.

Think about it...it just has to work eventually...and just suppose it doesn't...let's say it starts to slow the leak almost immediately...even a failure with sandbags can help alot. With any fix, relief wells must be drilled to protect from future failures of any fix!

I say we would need 3 cargo ships full of sand bags on deck for the job. I'd test the currents and see if they can be just dumped over, not guided through a tube. Maybe guide some giant sandbags like the ones the helicopters were dropping to build protective sand bars.

Trouble is I think, BP doesn't want to bury access to that 100 million dollar well yet.

Ron Komorowski

Inventor of Handi-Straps

Actually giant sand bags would be more effective at delivery on point and less prone to movement. Using the example of fine sand, think of giant sand bags as large grains of sand or small gravel in a pool. It would fall much more directly to the bottom and bear better on the bottom, as there is less surface area to mass. The permeability of sand might be an issue to consider, so you might need to add bentonite clay to create a low permeable material. However, as concrete has much more submerged bearing pressure (it is denser than sand), and the blow out moved the concrete, i suspect you would see a similar issue with a low permeability layer of sand bags being uplifted to burp the presssure then falling back in place until pressure builds again (at least until you have enough overburden pressure developed, which might be a substantial depth and width).

Your statement explains the point I feel could work, as well. The discharge is leaving a 2i inch pipe at 6,000 psi, granted that is a lot of force. As you explained the very idea is to defuse and disperse that discharge from 21 inches through a large blanket of bagged gravel as step one, now, the 6,000 psi is not 6,000 psi any longer and the 21 inch pipe discharge is now converted into square feet of discharge. The next layer of sand bags will reduce the flow even more and the third layer and so on... Much of the pressure is the gas, that will be dissipated through the sand, the idea is to trap the oil.

Roy H.

Actually as the oil becomes trapped it will begin to trap the gas also, this will increase the bouyant forces on the sand bags. Using gravel would allow a higher permeability, but anything that substantially traps the oil would eventually start to trap the gas as the oil clogs the pore spaces. Increasing the porosity of the materials would increase the time required to seal the pore spaces, but would also allow greater leakage of oil. As far as the pressure goes, well 6,000 psi across 21 inch opening is a huge amount of pressure to dissipate through sand bags. I am not sure the strength of the bags would withstand that kind of hydraulic pressure without getting shredded. Also that equates to 2 million pounds of force. You would need at least 2 million pounds of submerged weight sand bags, or approximately 4 million pounds of sand bags unsubmerged. They would need to be tethered to each other in some manner to keep the forces spread across the entire load, rather than becoming localized, or just go way over in the factor of safety just to account for localized variations in forces. also you need to consider the bouyancy effect due to the sand bags being saturated in oil rather than water. Sand has roughly 35 % void space that would be occupied by oil eventually.

This will never work. Sand is permeable. You will get capillary seepage everywhere.

It is absolutely ok if some oil permeates through the sand! At that point the pressure will be very low. The idea is to slow the pressure SLOWLY with sandbags.

If a small amount of oil oozed out, that can be dealt with until the permanent relief well is complete as no permanent cap on this well can be trusted.

That would create a new problem, as you change the bouyancy of the sand bags as they become permeated with oil and natural gas pockets they become more bouyant, reducing the overburden pressures.

RCE...here's the thing...whenever you have to figure something, like a math equation, you simplify the equation all you can to make it easier to solve so let's do that.

We bore a hole in the earth. Now the pressure of the earth causes the earth to expel pressurized oil and gas.

We now are trying all our engineering to "calm mother earth" RCE, we know our greatest engineering can't calm mother earth when she doesn't want that! Our engineering fixes really can't stop the pressure of the earth! Only the earth can fix itself! Our engineering is not strong enough. OK RCE...now you think I'm nuts....but no....

The way to fix a hole in the earth expelling pressure is TO BUILD A DAMN MOUNTAIN ON IT! This is the ONLY sure way possible. Now...build that mountain out of whatever you wish as long as it is dense, heavy, abundant and cheap. I say sand bags first, then maybe rock.

DON'T forget! To slow the leak and to be able to keep slowing the leak will "do" until the relief wells are drilled. Also, we need to find a safe feasible method today so if this happens again. The more this disaster costs us now the more it hurts the mining and drilling domestically for any resources we have here.

RCE...good talk back and forth! Thanks!

So, since we can not engineer to control "Mother Earth" how do the other deep wells work?

The idea of mathematical equations are to accurately represent the mechanics of the system, not to overly simplify the system. We simplify the system to make it understandable for the comprehension level of the audience. The only way to repair a leak is not to build a mountain. As an example we can consider water as another fluid that we see more commonly. Have you ever seen water leaking out of a mountain? the reason we dont engineer solutions to every problem we encounter with "mother earth" is because of the expense of doing so. You can redirect lava flows if you ware willing to spend the money, and even significantly reduce the likelihood of a volcano erupting or earthquake occurring if you want to expend the money and resources. So the question is do you think it is wise to expend the huge amount of resources needed to do what you are proposed, or would it be simpler to deal with the problem through use of better materials specifically designed to seal the leak?

We have tried "wild" engineering for weeks now. Don't forget, when a well is drilled the pressure is controlled and released slowly. We have lost that control and now have a wide open pipe spewing oil and NOTHING stopping it, just some engineers fighting in an office somewhere over what to do next. I have been on this sand bag "kick" for a few weeks now. First it was sand bags and rock. If we had sand bags over that pipe weeks ago, the leak would have been slowed greatly by now or even stopped.

Piling sandbags on the leak we KNOW we can do. Look what they proposed a week ago...the junk shot...golf balls, rope and tire...better than piling sand bags on the leak??? No way!

After today with this top kill fill with mud and cement, which I PRAY works or our economy may finally snap if this prolongs, if it don't work, the only choice may be to build a mountain on that leak...and they will start with sand bags...and maybe some rock...but I hope they succeed today.

The truth of the matter is that BP hasn't tried all the engineering, they haven't even come close. They have tried off the hip, which is not engineering, relatively cheap solutions, at least in terms of the cost of design and implementation. They haven't stopped and actually devised a solution, they are just trying to see what can be done cheaply and rapidly and make the biggest splash in the news to get positive public press. the guy with the idea to put a form of portable temporary steel patch over the leak has a much more viable idea than dropping a huge amount of sand bags. Consider what hapepens if the sand bags leak oil? Now you have the leak to deal with and 100,000 tons minimum of sand bags in the way. What BP has been doing is exactly what you are doing, they don't do the engineering properly and then rush to implement any crazy idea soem guy comes up with. So I guess there is a real good chance they will try sand bags next, followed by maybe a prayer circle and some chanting.

Let's just hope they are successful and I will tell you this, we all are responsible for this as we scream gimme more oil and cheaper. We ALL are responsible for drilling oil and ALL engineering or machines break...we can't blame BP for all of this...things break.

Is it possible for us to ever have a car that will never break? Well then oil rigs break too.

I will say this. I was at BP headquarters in Houston, in the safety offices with safety engineers pitching a couple safety inventions with my manufacturer who supplies the oil companies with mainly fall protection.

They made me take a 45 minute safety class with videos like I was going to be climbing oil rigs like a monkey or something. All I was doing is visiting offices and talking in conference rooms to BP's safety engineers. I commented on the ridiculous safety seminar I had to go through just to walk through a glass office door into the offices! People at BP agreed it may be a ridiculous overkill but that is the way it is...safety first.

I don't believe this is such recklessness by BP that caused all this. Blame us all for our consumption and demand....and pray for good luck for BP to fix this.....then the rest of us will figure ways to clean this mess up.

Have you seen this:

http://bp.concerts.com/gom/kentwells_update24052010.htm

Sorry, forgot to sign in last time:

Main Site

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7062605

Present ROV at work

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/html/OceanInterventionROV2.html

I saw your math and reasons why the sand bags would not work, somehow I missed your suggested solution. Knowing the system now in place failed, regardless of the reason, you can bet there will be a different design in the future and more than likely a manual "walk in door" to the sea floor equipment room that will be used in the event the other 5 back up systems were to fail.

I hope the fix they are trying works.

Super tankers circling the leaking site toeing equipment collecting the oil is another idea to apply your math to, why wasn't that done, another dumb suggestion.

If sand and earth will not work then why isn't oil and lava oozing up all over the place. Ofcoarse it will eventually work.

Don't forget, we'll take something that will slowly ooze out a little bit of oil. There is absolutely no permanent fix except the relief wells.

Anything to block or give resistance to that open pipe spewing oil would be a good thing. If we could hold down a rock over that pipe to divert the flow some, the pressure will reduce some therefor emmiting less oil. Right now that pipe is left "free" to flow oil as it pleases...a big mistake even with the top kill. If they threw something over the pipe to help slow the pressure...maybe even a screen of some type, so it stays...even that would help cut the pressure some. As I see it...

In the "top kill" procedure now being tried, they will need to attach the mud pipe to the top of the riser stub off the BOP. Instead of pumping mud down this pipe, why not let the oil pump itself up the pipe? Or is this idea too alimentary, my dear Watson?

Yeah huh? If they can pump mud into, why can't we pull oil??? I guess they know..they have some of the best engineers in the world. The video link to BP that was just put on this thread was VERY interesting! I will be watching that daily or so for BP's report.

Hey....one thing. I always try to find positive. Sooner or later this was going to happen. Atleast we will now find ways to deal with it if it happens again or make offshore drilling safer before we expand drilling operations...if we do that now as we were planning.

Actually there was already a means to prevent this from happening, a sonic activated valve, that other countries, like Brazil, have been requiring for years. the oil companies have lobbied against its implementation in the US, and been successfull for a while now, as I understand it. Whta this will likely do is provide some impetus for congress and the administration to actually catch up to the rest of the world on their engineered redundancies and safety requirements for Oil drilling. surely the oil lobby money may have gone unnoticed in the past with the elections coming up and the terms following, this could be a hot button that gets some of the corruption out of government oversight, regulation and legislation regarding oil. I heard the head of the mineral department resigned today, and the Presidents speach was pretty scathing (and that was before he was informed she had resigned before the speach). The Administration and Congress are losing substantial political clout over this.

Follow the money! As evil it is, it don't lie.

at least when looking at corporations, private citizens more foten then not have personal deeply seated psychologies that motivate them. Also is always good to look for the path of least resistance when following money through corporations, as they tend towards the laziest and/or least astute sources of labor from their labbor pools to promote to management. So they will first seek to reduce cost/increase profits, but definitely do so in a manner that requires the least technical knowledge and activity on the decision-makers part within the corporations.