So after 85 days of constant pouring of over 184 million gallons of oil into our wonderful ocean, they finnaly have figured out a temporary fix... Why is it that it took them this long??? How long will it last??? So this is kind of a pointless thread, I just wanted to get some fellow enthusiasts opinions on the situation...

 

Obviously I don't really know the engineering details, only the BS that makes it to the news media.
But it seems like when they made the FIRST cap, they didn't do the buoyancy calculation correctly. Either didn't include the forces due to the blow-off loads, or maybe didn't include the forces of buoyancy due to the TOTAL inventory of oil inside the cap and pipeline.
Multi-phase flow (oil, sand, water, mud, crud) inside a pressurized pipeline, submerged underwater, isn't a very easy analysis.

 

i personally think this thing will go for a long time. the solution which bp has come up with does not seem to be a very solid and long lasting one.

 

hopefully it will last untill the relief wells reach their destination. I can't believe the pressure. Over 6000 psi! that is insane.

 

There's a LOT of applications in industry with higher pressure than that.

 

Your Right Jim...like the high pressure I have when I drag my credit card thru the pump pay slot every time I fill up...

Angelo

 

A Berkeley physicist said that BP forgot to apply simple physics (he didn't say what that is) when they made the first cap.

 

Well I got all dazed and confused over the first repair attempt when they lowered the big containment bell, then said it wouldn't work because it was "freezing" at the depth of the well head.
How does something freeze when it is in seawater above freezing temp?

But beyond that, I agree that there were many many solutions to stem the flow that were over looked, or disregarded.

To top off a bad situation, our own government EPA rules denied the use of skimmers/separators that removed 95% of oil from the water.
EPA required more than 99% removal.
I'd rather see 5% left floating around then 100%.

 

Maybe the oil was coming out of the ground & cooling off when it escaped. Not the water freezing into ice, but rather the crude-oil hardening into a more sludgy/waxy mixture??