You're not an idiot, what ideas have you thought of for fixing the leak that you haven't heard being suggested elsewhere?<p>(This question was inspired by the debate over whether news updates on the status of repairs were HN appropriate.)
I don't understand why BP's people think that you can just shove some heavy gunk into the hole and expect it to stay there. Common sense would suggest that you'd have to start by anchoring something inside the hole which you could use to build a progressively denser matrix. How the hell you do that at 30,000 feet underwater I don't know. Depending on the state of the hole perhaps you could put a hollow, expandable cylinder into the hole. The cylinder also would have a series of hinged blades that could be released and the pressure of the oil would force the blades together and close the leak. Hard to explain without drawing a diagram. Since it's an obvious solution I would guess that there's a good technical reason why it can't be done.
I would think that some sort of suction could draw up enough mixture to minimize the problem. For example, 5,000 barrels a day is 145 gallons per minute. ($3500 = 10hp 145gpm pump)<p>I would think that they could hook a giant pump onto one or more pipes and collect it somehow. At 145gpm, it would take 7000 years to fill up one of the super tankers.<p>Likewise, I wonder if they could put a heater on the top hat pipe. Maybe the oil is thick at that temp/pressure. Or maybe there are ice crystals, but it seems like they could solve that somehow. We have wires up North to thaw frozen pipes. Shop vacs have larger diameter hoses to not get clogged so easily. Maybe they could bundle lots of smaller pipes together.<p>Ironically, I accidentally poured a few cups of oil into my truck's coolant reservoir. I thought it would all float to the surface, but lots of it just stayed at the bottom. Blowing bubbles into the tank made it float up sort of like the bubble "pumps" in a fish aquarium.<p>At this point, they should just create a contest and let school kids come up with ideas.
Beware of mistaking intelligence for knowledge. If you don't really know anything about the subject matter, you are likely to overlook all kinds of relevant details, making your intelligent solution pretty much useless. If, in addition to being intelligent, you aren't aware of your lack of knowledge, you may get the tendency to think everyone that couldn't come up with your 'obvious' solution is a fool, which leads others to turn away and rant like
<a href="http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/" rel="nofollow">http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/</a>
If there is one thing that playing video games over the couple of decades has taught me it's that there is NOTHING that a well placed nuke cannot fix.<p>That is all.
If I were BP, I would post online detailed specs of the physics and equipment in play, in tandem with a massive cash prize for an original idea leading to the successful plugging of the leak.
I've heard from more than one petroleum engineer that the only thing likely to work is relief wells and that all the rest of this is theatre. If that's true, it's a politically impossible truth, which would explain much of what we've seen so far.<p>Apparently all the same techniques (the cap, the top kill) were tried 30 years ago -- in much shallower water -- and didn't work then either. What worked was a relief well. If that precedent holds, then we're barely past the beginning of this catastrophe. I hope that's not true, but it's beginning to look that way.
So to get started, my uneducated suggestion is that they put a giant cylinder over the leak so as to at least contain the oil as it rises to the surface. I understand the problems with depth and pressure so ideally there is some fabric that is highly mailable (plastic, rubber, etc.)<p>With little background in physics I would think that the pressure of the oil's need to rise to the surface would exceed the pressure of the water's need to collapse the cylinder.<p>Criticism of this or any other idea is more than welcome.
Not sure if anyone else saw this clip on the Rachel Maddow show, but it was interesting. Seems like the last time something this massive happened (in much shallower water), the same techniques were tried (and failed) and finally, relief wells were the solution - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo</a>
I actually had to deal with something similar at home.<p>Granted it was flowing water, but same principle.<p>Anyways what you do is use an open hose and some hose clamps on the leaking pipe, then you direct the oil hose where you want it to go. Since there is no resistance on the other end, the oil will just go through without any pressure build up. And by using a hose clamp on the leak, it doesn't go elsewhere.<p>Then you can point the hose whereever, maybe park an oil tanker nearby, and pipe directly into it. Then you build a platform that uses a Y valve to divert oil between multiple vessels without spilling.<p>Here is a diagram: <a href="http://imgur.com/4m2GY.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/4m2GY.jpg</a>
There is always the Russian solution - a nuclear bomb (I think they actually did this, and I think it was successful - hate to see what happened to the surrounding wildlife though)
<a href="http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/russian-paper-suggests-nuclear-explosion-cut-gulf-oil-geyser/" rel="nofollow">http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/russian-paper-suggests-nucl...</a>
To confirm, the sea floor is 5000ft below the surface, and the oil reservoir 18000 feet below that.<p>There are some good diagrams at NYT and washington post:
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/05/25/GR2010052504985.html?sid=ST2010052903349" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/05...</a>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-topkill-diagram.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-to...</a><p>Funny that the outlet on top of the cap they tried to lower over the leak became clogged with some kind of ice/methane crystal mix.<p>The junk shot/top kill didn't work... as far as I can tell, the mud just sprayed out the top of the broken, bent pipe. Taking blood coagulation as an analogy, there is a complex system of aggregation to form a clot and then strengthen at a breach in an arterial wall - this isn't exactly replicated by what they used in the junk shot, apparently a mixture of mud, golf balls and car tyres.<p>One idea would be to try something else for a junk shot that would actually change the flow characteristics of the oil such as glue, or liquid nitrogen. Mind you, this stuff gets pumped into bottom of the blow out preventer, and the leak is at the top 30ft away. That isn't very much time to change the viscosity of the oil. You would also need a very large volume of this junk shot material... Alternatively, maybe junk shooting with a pile of rare earth magnets could do the trick, assuming the pipe is ferromagnetic.<p>Also there is still the sea-floor to surface pipe attached to the top of the blowout preventer, albeit bent off at an angle. You could thread something through the post breach pipe back towards the main breach and try to plug it that way.<p>The coolest solution I can think of is to fire a copper slug down the throat of the bastard thing with a surface mounted rail gun.
A rhombic triacontahedron can be formed out of "bricks" which are truncated versions of projections from the polyhedral faces to the center. Make these out of cement, and build a half dome around the well head. The pressure of the water should hold the bricks together with more force than the pressure of the well.
I sat here for about five minutes thinking about this, and this really is beyond me.<p>But I do have this picture in my head of throwing a bunch of gigantic parachute things into the water. Perhaps with tubes in their centers that lead to the surface. Or, throw so many parachutes down that it creates a canopy that directs where the oil goes. Or put some kind of super heating devices on these things and I don't really know what that would do....<p>Or they can build a huge cone from the surface downward.<p>Like you said, I'm no expert.
I am sure there is no way I can explain this, but you all seem pretty smart, so here goes. What if they created a chamber using a larger diameter cylinder, say 10" larger than the pipe coming from the well head. There would be a hole in the bottom which is exactly the outside diameter of the broken pipe on the well head. The top of the chamber is left open at this point. The chamber is placed over the well head and welded into place while the oil continues to spew out the open top. The top of the chamber would have braces welded to it which would act sort of like drawer glides. An example would be like how the top of a cigar box slides into grooves cut in the sides. These braces would act like the grooves in the cigar box. But obviously with a lot more surface area to hold the pressure of the flow.A top could be slid into place, cutting off the oil flow and held there by the braces. The top is then welded or bolted to the chamber. The top could have a pipe with a valve installed that would connect to the ship above to capture the oil while the valve would control the flow. Anyway, I'm no engineer and I actually may be an idiot, but it's just a thought I had. Fire away.....
I would weld a flange around the outside of the pipe a bit below where it's broken. This shouldn't be a problem since there's no oil under pressure coming out there.<p>Then I would make a contraption consisting of three parts:<p>1) similar flange to the one on the ocean floor that can be bolted on to the one welded on the pipe<p>2) a cylinder welded on top of the flange<p>3) some sort of closing mechanism on top of the cylinder.<p>Get divers (or ROV's) down to attach the contraption to the pipe by bolting the two flanges together. This should be possible since the oil will just rise out of the cylinder, so the pressure of the oil shouldn't be a problem. When the contraption is secured activate the closing mechanism.<p>The only requirement here is that you can weld something onto the pipe below where the leak is. I don't know whether that's possible at that depth though.
There are two inlets (link to pic below). Pump a slurry of mineral oil, aluminum pellets, and elemental sodium on one side. On the other pump sea water. The chemical reaction looks like: 2Na + 2H2O -> H2 + 2NaOH, and a whole lot of heat that might melt the aluminum just long enough to form blobs. There's no O2 left over so combustion won't happen, right? -OR- maybe a two part foam, with composite reinforcement would work.<p><a href="http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/images/TopKill_05-16-10_1750xvar.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_u...</a>
I would immediately seek out, using all methods possible, anyone who could reasonably be considered an expert on such issues (to my own satisfaction), and find out their opinion.<p>Then I'd find out what my budget was, and who else I had to deal with afterwards.<p>Etc...
I think BP should have dealt with the oil flowing up to the surface first. They should bring in the massive tankers with big vacuums to suck the oil up. This will buy them more time to fix the leaks below.
I would drop a large inverted cone made of steel or concrete so that it's point obscured the breach. The weight of the plug would keep the oil pressure from pushing it out, while a stabilizing float attached to it's top would prevent the cone from tipping over. Like so:<p><pre><code> | < Line up to deploying ship
O
O < Stabilizing float
|
----- < Steel/concrete plug
\ /
__\ /__ < Breach
V
</code></pre>
Once it settled you could likely pour a block of cement around it...
Hmm, since it has leaked so much oil already... I wonder what would be the effects of just letting the well empty out. Make the hole really big so that pressure is reduced, then the oil just floats to the top where you can collect it all. Maybe a giant floating ring to contain the oil in the surface.<p>No idea how to deal with the `plumes`, though. <silly> Add detergent? </silly>
I remember reading about how atomic weapons detonated at the point of the leak would seal it a few weeks ago.<p>More information at <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Why-don-t-we-just-drop-a-nuclear-bomb-on-the-Gulf-oil-spill" rel="nofollow">http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0513/Why-don-t-we-just...</a>
1) Put a big ass cap on the top of it 2) Try to choke it off by pumping in a ton of junk. 3) Blow it up.<p>Those are truly ideas I had instantly. What's terrifying is that my ideas bare any resemblance to the supposed experts's.
I'd send in Juan Sheet to sort it out: <a href="http://youtu.be/Xknub_pILt8" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/Xknub_pILt8</a> .. he says "this spill is no match for me."
The tactic of suctioning oil/water into a pipe/tube has the benefit of not falling prey to many of the other problems (inability to form a seal, temperate/freezing, needing fine-grained on-site human activity, etc.). Bring the oil/water mix up to the surface, maybe filter it, dump it in a ship/tank on the surface. Downside is it may be impossible to suck up 100% of the leaking oil, but even getting 80% would be a huge improvement, and reduce further damage to the sea. I believe they started doing it, then at least temporarily stopped it to prepare for the top kill attempt.
I have no idea how the broken pipe looks like, but cover it with an inverted funnel connected to the remaining pipe to the surface. This way at least some of the oil will be recovered.