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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Issykitty.

is it me? or is that hose still leaking..?

Isn't the leak essentially on the side of a horizontal pipe? So you would have a maximum length that you could make the taper. I don't think they will be able to do anything thing unless they relieve some of the flow coming from the pipe.

The pipe has now been cut so it's vertical at the top of the blowout preventer.

Upvote for best use of but plug ever.

I like the fact that people are thinking about how to stop this.

That being said, here are my thoughts about this possible fix:

When he is pressing down on the plug he is also pressing up on the hose with the same amount of force. The well-head would not be able to withstand the amount of downward force needed to stop the flow of oil. I think the well-head would crumple.

In order for this model test to be accurate they would need to make the test plug weigh much more.

*water

Adding video to channels (Water) - requested by EDD.

Butt Plug it?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Wow, great idea. Way to go Arvana.

What if you left a pipe running through the plug so that the oil could flow up the pipe allowing you to ram it in and get a good seal. Then have a valve on the end that could be shut off once the plug is in place and sealed?

BP will not accept any solution that impedes the flow of oil. They don't want to stop the leak, they want to capture it.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

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Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, June 5th, 2010 9:07am PDT - promote requested by dag.

I don't recall BP ever saying they would abandon the well once they stop the flow. The very fact that they're building "relief wells" elsewhere just proves that. There's no reason a "relief well" isn't also going to be a production well.

Plugging this leak would not interfere with BP's intentions of capturing the oil that is still in this patch.

>> ^MaxWilder:

BP will not accept any solution that impedes the flow of oil. They don't want to stop the leak, they want to capture it.

I can't hear the audio.

The real question is how a scaled up version of this plug will behave at 10 thousand psi.

[redacted]

@arvana, your technique needs a goofy name in order to be considered for discussion. I propose "dreidel shot".

Actually, watching this has given me what I suspect might be a pretty solid idea. Let me see if I can scribble something up...

[edit]

Ok, so it seemed to me that the hard part of plugging something like this is that it's hard to secure the plug in place because of the pressure. It would obviously be so much easier to seal the pipe before it has to handle the pressure. So here's a concept that allows you to secure the plug before putting full "load" on it.

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/121/plug1w.jpg

The grey tube at the bottom represents the pipe. The gold object at the top is really a bracket to secure the green object which is the actual plug. The green part needs to be made out of something expandable or inflatable.

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/3707/plug2.jpg

You could lower the unit into place and secure it first without fighting the full pressure of the escaping oil, and then trigger the expansion or inflation of the green stuff. There's enough space above the green stuff to properly cement the pipe.

OK. So I see the confusion. Let me explain.

If you have horizontal pipe on a sea bed with a pipe leading to the surface, then you can think of the pipe as a sideways laying "L" like this ____|. The stub that goes to the surface is some distance 'x' long. So the maximum length you can make you taper, until the diameter is equal to the diameter of the pipe is some length less than 'x', the length of the stub.

Does that make more sense?

This means there is a limited length you can make the taper. Experimentally, the force needed to cap the pipe will increase with "increasing taper angle". If you think of the limiting case where the taper angle goes to 180 degrees, then there is no taper. So the point that the taper length is limited is very relevant.

I think that is clear.

>> ^arvana:

The pipe has now been cut so it's vertical at the top of the blowout preventer.

MaxWilder is 100% correct. BP CEO Tony Hayward made it very clear that the goal is a return to "production". Watching many of the BP ROV feeds the last couple weeks and it's obvious the main purpose of the "containment cap" is to get some oil into a damn tanker, not stopping the leak. "Containment" is NOT the same as stopping flow. If they wanted to stop it, they could have done it in a week, immho. Cut the bolts on flange currently just below the cap with that fancy-shmancy diamond blade, silver seal, tree, close valves. Take your sweet time with the relief wells. Easy peasy (although it may be not so easy-peasy a mile down).

The condition of the pipe directly above the upper flange of the BOP after the shear op made it virtually unsealable using the inflatable gasket within the cap as they had described. Reports of increasing oil capture rates mean nothing when thousands of barrels a day are still pouring out the bottom of the cap. We were told that as they close off vents of the cap, the rates of recovered oil will increase. Bullshit. The vents were wide open when they put that puppy on, and you couldn't even see the the thing because so much oil was leaking through the bottom seals. Closing off the vents may increase the pressure of oil heading up the pipe, but it will also increase the amount of pressure on the seal (5000ft of head notwithstanding). Seems to me the only way make the current containment cap work is if some super-duper pump is able to suck (I know... pumps don't suck; day one of "A" school) oil up 5000 feet of pipe faster than the oil is flowing out the top of the BOP.

I just checked the BP feeds (Skandi ROV 1, Skandi ROV 2, and Enterprise ROV 1), and the amount of oil flowing out the bottom of the cap is only slightly improved from when they slapped the thing on there.

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

+1 for "dreidel shot"

[redacted]

^Well, probably not so easy as I stated.

However, I think you may be over-estimating BP's desire to avert a PR catastrophy. The world needs oil, and they have oil to sell. It's not about 6000 barrels a day. That IS chump change. But bad PR isn't gonna cost them shit. The clean-up will. I'm sure BP beancounters have already calculated the costs of clean-up vs the cost of capping the well. That 100-ton funnel monstrosity they first tried, and the two more they have since tried, were never intended to buy time so they could cap it. They are buying time for the relief wells. It's always been about getting the oil and doing whatever they can to stem the flow WITHOUT capping.

But hey, I'm just pissed. Could be wrong. Happened before. The whole "we're getting 6000 barrels a day" stuff could be seen as PR or public mollification. But they have no plans to STOP the leakage any time soon. From the BP ROV page: "We may leave some of the LMRP cap valves open to ensure system stability - one is currently closed".

Stupidest video I've ever seen on the sift.

Do you idiots have any basic concepts of physics? Seriously, 21" pipe, 66 in^2, 5000 psi (maybe 400psi relative to water pressure). First of all, the sea floor there isn't like rock, secondly the BOP would explode if they plugged the leak (and is probably already leaking), thirdly, the sink a ship on it is better solution then some idiot sitting around with a hose and sticking his thumb in it to come up with ideas.

If they thought the oil wouldn't leak out from somewhere else, they would just cut off the BOP and get a giant bag and start pumping down cement down to cover the sea floor around the well head.

@jimnms: Having a pipe running through the plug is a great idea -- then they can stay in production, which I agree with @MaxWilder is BP's main goal.

@xxovercastxx: An inflatable plug is another excellent idea, the tricky part will be securing it before inflation so it can withstand the upward pressure of oil as it seals against the pipe, otherwise it will get blown out. It could also just be made heavy enough to overcome the pressure.

@MycroftHomlz: The taper length is definitely relevant, but unless the blowout preventer itself has some inner geometries that prevent a long taper, there is nothing stopping it from being as long as possible. The horizontal pipe on the sea bed has been cut off.

Tbh, well said joedirt. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a parody - if not, what an embarassment to the people in the video.

I accept they're trying to help, but they're trying to suggest to experts in pressure and drilling to use the old "finger in the dyke" method?

The question is "how can we plug the leak?" and this video says "well you could... uh.. you know, plug it?"

Why don't we just do this with volcanos too?

@arvana. I think some important questions are: Is the pipe perpendicular to the sea floor and straight? How long is it to the end of the pipe?

It would be informative to calculate the force on the plug as a function of separation.

In a nonuniform hydrodynamic flow your cone will be unstable. Rifling, could help... and may only be necessary on the initial part of the taper.

The spice must flow.

>> ^Mcboinkens:

>> ^MaxWilder:
BP will not accept any solution that impedes the flow of oil. They don't want to stop the leak, they want to capture it.

You honestly think that? Do you really think they would make more money by capturing the remaining oil and paying for the continous environmental damages rather than stopping it and drilling another well later?

And these kind of suggestions are nice, but when you think how many of the world's top engineers are working on stopping it, you have to realize this has probably been thought through, before. But, the more suggestions the merrier I guess.

Just finished watching the video. Was this some sort of joke? The literally just plugged it, saying it worked by stopping a garden hose. Duct tape could stop it too, doesn't mean it will work miles below the surface. I also love how once he lets go of the plug, it shifts and lets water just flow on by. Why didn't I think of jamming a huge piece of steel down into the pipe.

Screw engineering.. Prayer is far better! Works every time!

LOL! Oh, come on, JD. Stupiest video ever? EVER? Personally, I enjoyed the video. Love thinking about stuff like this hearing what others think up. This is a pretty horrible disaster, and I have no doubt there are millions and millions of armchair engineers (and real engineers) around the world who have both good and not-so-good ideas on how to solve it. I wouldn't diss or belittle any of them their noble, well-meaning, and often frustrated efforts and ideas. That said, I wonder if the benefits of Venturi effect (lower pressure of increasing fluid flow) when inserting the dreidel outweigh the adverse effect of Pascal (fluid at rest acting on the much larger surface area of the cone) when the dreidel is fully inserted. Not an expert, just thinking out loud.

Idiots? Basic concepts of physic? Really? REALLY?

You're right the sea floor isn't like rock, but it's not like they just jammed a pipe a few feet into the seabed and called her good. That well is likely many thousands of feet below the seafloor (lined with pipe the whole way). While it undoubtedly passes through layers of porous rock, that oil has remained where it is for millions of years under impermeable (to the oil) rock. If it wasn't impermeable, the oil wouldn't be there.

I have no idea what the pressure of the oil is, but, as you said in your comment, it's the differential pressure that matters. The BOP would not explode. No effin' way. It's not the same as Popeye putting his finger in Bluto's gun barrel and the barrel blows up like a balloon 'til it explodes in poor Bluto's face. Pascal's Law just doesn't work that way. And although you used it as an example, rather than an estimate of well pressure, 400 PSI ain't shit. If you were bemoaning the total pressure on the inside of a pipe with relatively large surface area, be rest-assured that people smarter than us long ago figured out appropriate pipewall thickness/diameter ratios for anticipated operating pressures for a given material (with slide-rules and shit). The current devastation notwithstanding, imho, it's not due to a pipe rupturing (at the seafloor). 5000' of oil head is lighter than 5000' feet of water head, so the pressure difference of a cap at the BOP would be even lower. I'm on my second glass of Cuvee, so I may have that exactly backwards. W/E.

The cement thingy... LOL! I hope you were just being smarmy, because unless you're using super Star Trek Horta cement or something, the only way I can think of to stop the flow after cutting off the BOP (short of relief wells) is to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


>> ^joedirt:

Stupidest video I've ever seen on the sift.
Do you idiots have any basic concepts of physics? Seriously, 21" pipe, 66 in^2, 5000 psi (maybe 400psi relative to water pressure). First of all, the sea floor there isn't like rock, secondly the BOP would explode if they plugged the leak (and is probably already leaking), thirdly, the sink a ship on it is better solution then some idiot sitting around with a hose and sticking his thumb in it to come up with ideas.
If they thought the oil wouldn't leak out from somewhere else, they would just cut off the BOP and get a giant bag and start pumping down cement down to cover the sea floor around the well head.

*dead @arvana anywhere we might find a fix for this?

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