6 ms·

Then wouldn't capturing it and feeding it back into the same reservoir solve the problem? At least temporarily?

by talmand 11y ago

VLM 11y ago
If they were not extremely careful about removing all the oxygen, then pumping oxygen into the reservoir would eventually be very exciting once the oxygen percentage rises above a certain limit. There is also a circular argument that compressing and pumping natgas takes a fair amount of energy. Of course you could burn the gas in a turbine. But then its simpler to just install 2 or 3 times the turbine capacity and just sell power to the grid. Also see above about explosions, no one is going to rent you a natgas turbine or rent you the money to buy one if the likely lifetime before the big explosion is only a week or two. Also hooking piping up to the reservoir is roughly as difficult as digging the kill well they're already working on, so rather than stopping it in Feb they'd merely be partially recycling by next May or something. So what they're already doing to shut it down, will be done much faster.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- talmand 11y ago
  You obviously know more than me, I was just commenting on the capturing idea needing a reservoir to place it after capture. I was also thinking of just storing as much as possible in a series of large inflatable balloons. You'd have to keep some distance between them in case one decides to explode I guess.
- digikata 11y ago
  Capture, compress, and truck it over to some other nat-gas burning facility. Really it seems like other options are being dismissed purely on cost - but the cost of extended legal complications after the fact will be huge.
  - VLM 11y ago
    You've stumbled into an interesting contemporary engineering problem, as an overall system combining all costs is it cheaper to compress natgas into CNG or liquify it into LNG? And the answer is "it depends". In both cases you're probably going to have to burn about 10% to 20% onsite to generate the power to run the compressors. This also explains why its financially viable to spend $1M/mile on gas pipelines instead of transporting it in tanks on the back of trucks. In as few words as possible this is more or less why your house furnace probably runs on natgas, but probably not your car. As an overall system its more efficient to burn the vapor in your furnace connected by pipes and the liquid in your mobile car. And that circulates back to my suggestion that if you have to install 20% of flow capacity in the form of generators to run liquifiers, from an overall system standpoint it makes more sense to scale up five times, get somewhat higher process efficiency, and just pump KWh of electricity into the grid rather than making a complicated plant. Also capture is assumed to be simpler than catching butterflies. It won't be, it won't be cheap, and it won't be effective. WRT economic costs shouldn't matter when talking about the environment, its unavoidable. Spending $100M on building and operating a temporary plant will as a factor of blowing $100M result in environmental damage likely far exceeding just dumping the fuel unburnt. The planet has suffered incredible damage in the past from "we have to do something", and probably always will in the future.
    - digikata 11y ago
      Well, if someone were to put together a spot compression or generation system, how many older storage sites / leaks sites exist such that it would be worth the apply the capital to design and assemble a number of units which could be leased on an emergency basis? It seems like back east there are lot of fairly small fracking wells setup for spot generation. If that's a shorter design distance from what could be used then even better. I agree about the environmental costs, but mostly phrased it the way I did because it's a lot easier to convince a company to release the funds if it's going to cost them one way or another... worse, as a side issue if government steps in with emergency funding to help citizens, it's an unfortunate encouragement of corporate strategy of 'privatize the profits and socialize the risks'.
    - 11y ago

Then wouldn't capturing it and feeding it back into the same reservoir solve the problem? At least temporarily?

by talmand 11y ago

Then wouldn't capturing it and feeding it back into the same reservoir solve the problem? At least temporarily?

VLM 11y ago

If they were not extremely careful about removing all the oxygen, then pumping oxygen into the reservoir would eventually be very exciting once the oxygen percentage rises above a certain limit. There is also a circular argument that compressing and pumping natgas takes a fair amount of energy. Of course you could burn the gas in a turbine. But then its simpler to just install 2 or 3 times the turbine capacity and just sell power to the grid. Also see above about explosions, no one is going to rent you a natgas turbine or rent you the money to buy one if the likely lifetime before the big explosion is only a week or two. Also hooking piping up to the reservoir is roughly as difficult as digging the kill well they're already working on, so rather than stopping it in Feb they'd merely be partially recycling by next May or something. So what they're already doing to shut it down, will be done much faster.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
talmand 11y ago
You obviously know more than me, I was just commenting on the capturing idea needing a reservoir to place it after capture. I was also thinking of just storing as much as possible in a series of large inflatable balloons. You'd have to keep some distance between them in case one decides to explode I guess.
digikata 11y ago
Capture, compress, and truck it over to some other nat-gas burning facility. Really it seems like other options are being dismissed purely on cost - but the cost of extended legal complications after the fact will be huge.
- VLM 11y ago
  You've stumbled into an interesting contemporary engineering problem, as an overall system combining all costs is it cheaper to compress natgas into CNG or liquify it into LNG? And the answer is "it depends". In both cases you're probably going to have to burn about 10% to 20% onsite to generate the power to run the compressors. This also explains why its financially viable to spend $1M/mile on gas pipelines instead of transporting it in tanks on the back of trucks. In as few words as possible this is more or less why your house furnace probably runs on natgas, but probably not your car. As an overall system its more efficient to burn the vapor in your furnace connected by pipes and the liquid in your mobile car. And that circulates back to my suggestion that if you have to install 20% of flow capacity in the form of generators to run liquifiers, from an overall system standpoint it makes more sense to scale up five times, get somewhat higher process efficiency, and just pump KWh of electricity into the grid rather than making a complicated plant. Also capture is assumed to be simpler than catching butterflies. It won't be, it won't be cheap, and it won't be effective. WRT economic costs shouldn't matter when talking about the environment, its unavoidable. Spending $100M on building and operating a temporary plant will as a factor of blowing $100M result in environmental damage likely far exceeding just dumping the fuel unburnt. The planet has suffered incredible damage in the past from "we have to do something", and probably always will in the future.
  - digikata 11y ago
    Well, if someone were to put together a spot compression or generation system, how many older storage sites / leaks sites exist such that it would be worth the apply the capital to design and assemble a number of units which could be leased on an emergency basis? It seems like back east there are lot of fairly small fracking wells setup for spot generation. If that's a shorter design distance from what could be used then even better. I agree about the environmental costs, but mostly phrased it the way I did because it's a lot easier to convince a company to release the funds if it's going to cost them one way or another... worse, as a side issue if government steps in with emergency funding to help citizens, it's an unfortunate encouragement of corporate strategy of 'privatize the profits and socialize the risks'.
  - 11y ago