Oil Spills

Have you tested this oil containment method?

Having worked with many oil spills in the past, the most effective methods are those that can be deployed quickly, while the oil is still on the surface. Given a small amount of time, the oil will age, sink and frequently pass under containment barriers.

"... but it went to Facebook." What???

I guess that if you have one of these block trains stored in any harbour close to the platforms in an area, say the North Sea, I'll gues that they could be deployed in place in a matter of hours.

chorete

It's like this: (see bold and bold italicized)

²¹ He said to Aaron, "What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?"

²² "Do not be angry, my lord," Aaron answered. "You know how prone these people are to evil. ²³ They said to me, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.' ²⁴ So I told them, 'Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.' Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!"

Yeah, right!

"Floating concrete blocks" is an oxymoron.

Have you worked this out?

Piers and docks are made of floating concrete.

I know this by experience:

http://www.portofgraysharbor.com/westport/westportMarinaDetails.php

Every single one of those docks in the upper right picture is made from floating concrete. They are actually labeled as floats, as in "Float 1", "Float 2", as in the photo towards the lower left.

Also, see here:

http://dcnonl.com/article/id24411

And how does it work as an oil absorber?

How do you "squeeze it out" when it's full of oil, and where do you put the oil?

I'm gone.

It's a containment boom. Just like the plastic floating booms in use now. They don't absorb the oil, they contain it.

Pumps are used to remove the oil from the containment area encircled by the boom later.

My point is that concrete can be made to float, period.

What the user does with it is up to them.

Not quite like the plastic ones; which are flexible.

Sure concrete can be made to float. Some yachts are ferro-cement.

That leaves the question of how well a 'concrete circle', rigid enough to be moved by a tug, will do - say in the North Sea.

And here is a picture.

North Sea oil rig supply vessel having a bad day

Doesn't get much worse anywhere else in the world...

Especially on such a regular basis

Yes, but ferro-cement boats are water proof and displace water, not absorb it.

TERRIFYING STORM!

But there is a chance that my circle could resist even this. Do not forget that the tensioned spoke wheel, by far, is the most resistant structure, using very thin members.

But we must be practical. When there is a heavy storm warning. there is probably time enough to remove (Even panic cutting) of the radius cables an break the circle, leaving the train of blocks tame the storm with one end anchored to the ocean bottom, if possible, or free the whole train to float with the waves.

But, again we must be reasonable. What is the probability of having an oil spill at a certain point?, Say 0.001 (or much less). Then what is the probability of having a heavy storm?. say 0.01. I guess that the compound probability of 0,00001 is so small that we can be confident that the system could be used MOST of the times.

The problem as in Fukigima is when such NEGLIGIBLE probability becomes truth.

In this case the result is just an oil spill for only a maximum of a few days. If we have been able to save the block train. NOT a deadly radiation.

chorete

The Lake Washington Floating Bridge and the Evergreen Point Bridge, both in Seattle, consist of hollow concrete pontoons. I suspect there are bilge pumps in the case of leaks, but I don't know any details.

Polypropylene mesh, straw, and other absorbents can pick up oil; and probably wrung out for reuse. As Chorete notes, whatever the containment boom is, it needs to extend both above and below the water surface.

Dear Lyn . A concrete block with voids floats as much as you want

chorete

Not if all of the voids are interconnected, as in a conventional concrete block.

Good luck.

Hey Guys!. Please do not concentrate in silly details as if cocrete can float or not.

Take the concept itself, with blocks of ANYTHING, and see if this is feasible in the hard real sea environments.

chorete

In an of itself, it does not seem to be an effective means for corraling and containing an oil spill in the open ocean.

To contain even a medium size spill of 100 barrels would probably take a concrete boom of over 1000 ft. Even assuming that you had a powerful enough vessel to pull this through the water, it would be very slow to get on site. Maneuvering of the concrete boom around the spill would probably also be very difficult to achieve and could only likely be done with a very powerful vessel. (As such, the propeller wash from this vessel would likely spread the spill even further.)

It appears to me that your idea is to isolate the spill and to prevent the surrounding sea conditions from spreading it. It is admirable to want to achieve this, but please note that there are already methods for achieving this that are much easier to store, transport and deploy than this concept.

What do you see as the advantage of your concept over the existing methods of oil spill containment?

I think your "forest fire blower" would be a nice application. Just hover over the spill and just keep the fire burning until the leak was stopped.

There are lighter/quicker, things about

link

GA, but my vote seems to be blocked by a saturated system.

I see that this needs further explanations.

An oil spill will spread very fast on the surface, by gravity, until it has a very small thickness and an enormous surface, this is why most barriers are very portable and thin.

But I do not address this case. I consider it hopeless.

I refer to cases when the spill comes from a continuous suply of oil from a sinking ship or a submarine well.

In the important case of submarine wells, the oil ascends forming like a conical plume up to the surface.

The primary area covered by the spill depends on the depth of the sea at this point.

In the case of Mexico it was large, but not as large as the gravity spread spill.

In the case of the North Sea, that I believe is very shallow. the primary spill spot would be very small.

If you use a typical barrier, it would take minutes to get over or under flowed

This is why I use a considerably deep barrier, capable of holding by itself a complete tankload. Also high enough over the waves so as the oil is not disturbed (This is not extremely mportant, because the leaked water would come out under the barrier)

1º I my case I need the barrier to be rigid enough so as it can be pushed by tug boats against heavy winds. and tides

2º Why?. In a typical case the spill and the barrier float pushed by the wind and tides. But in my case the spill emerges in one fixed point, not affected by the wind and affected by he tides that only change the sourcing point

3º As I do not care about the oil already spread before the containment team gets to the site. I am not bothered by the effect of the propellers on the spill

4º As for the power needed to move the block train, please consider that blocks are joined by steel joints but have some kind of flexible surface between them.

5º So the train is very thin (0.6 m) and with a continuous smooth surface. Probably not so much power would be needed. The lateral steel structure goes to one side but above water.

6º The system is intended to contain large quantities of oil to have time for the oil suction tankers to get to the site and to allow for the discharging cycles of these ships.

7º I hope that everybody sees that this system is very different from existing barriers

8º Resuming:The system asumes that A)-The primary oil spill is NOT a very large area. B)-THat we can install a circular barrier stiff enough to withstand the push by tugboats. C)- That there'll be at least one of these barriers close enough to the major submarine well fields. D)- In the case of sinking ships it would be pure good luck to have a barrier close enough.

chorete

Hi all.

I am pretty confident that my idea may work. Thank you for your criticisms.

BTW. Does anybody know how to REALLY contact one of these monstrous Big Oil Companies?.

Usually you get the typical link info@weneveranswer.com that goes nowhere.

I believe that Shell has a spill in the North Sea still going.

chorete

Oil companies always contract the work out for oil spill cleanup.

If you'd really like to pursue this idea, your best bet would be to contact several of your national oil spill cleanup companies. The Coast Guard, tug boat operators and stevedores can give you some good contacts as well.

Lately I have been in contact with people who know all about the subject, and it is clear that one should not try to solve a problem whose details ignores.

I was expecting that a 300 meter diameter containment wall, 5 meters deep capable of holding 353000 cubic meters(2,220,000barrels?) of spill, providing so some days of containment to wait for a tanker with suction pumps, would never be ccepted by oil Companies or even by the Oil Spill Response Group.Because

1º- A 1500 m deep spill plume reaches the surface in a much wider circle than 300m. This is not clear enough and there is much disaggreement between authors.

2º For a 300 m circle we'll need about 90 blocks and probably two large tugboats. The probability of a major spill is so low that NOBODY would finance certain amount of ready to work units around the World. The prime cost plus the maintenance for many years are prohibitive. In real life, when the accident happens the rubber or canvass joints would be fragile and the structures heavily rusted.

So again an useless good idea

chorete