Test it on San Fran Nan and see if it can keep her big mouth shut for at least five minutes.
Posted on 06/02/2010 3:31:54 AM PDT by Scanian
BP's engineers can't stop the gushing oil spill, but a young genius from Long Island says she found the solution in less time than it takes most people to finish a crossword puzzle.
Since the "top kill," "junk shot" and "top hat" techniques failed to end the environmental nightmare, Alia Sabur -- who started her engineering Ph.D. at age 14 -- is pushing for a more radical idea.
The Northport native, who started reading before she could walk and who at 18 broke a 300-year-old record to become the youngest-ever college professor, proposes surrounding a pipe with deflated automobile tires, inserting it into the leaking riser, and then inflating the wheels to form a seal.
She calls the plan the "seabed retread."
"It's not completely out there, considering that tires are used for everything and they're expected to withstand a lot," Sabur, 21, told The Post.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
” and ignore the 24/7 panic from the MSM “
And also the ‘instant experts’ that spring up like weeds, among other places, on FR, with their “all-ya-gotta-do” ‘solutions’....
You are correct that the devil is in the details, as they say.
One first needs to know what PSI the oil is generating.
Then one must find a tire that can withstand that pressure. Maybe fighter aircraft tires.
Then one must find a tire with those characteristics that is the correct diameter.
Then, assuming that one tire will not do it, but that the tires must be stacked on the core pipe, how a stack of tires maybe 50 or 100 ft high will all get inflated at one time.
Oh, yes. One has to have an air compressor that will do the job in such a manner that all will inflate simultaneously or the inflated tire will be crushed by the oil pressure before the next one can inflate to back it up.
And then there is the small matter of how you get a bunch of limp uninflated tires to withstand the huge pressures and rate of oil flow long enough to get them down in the pipe.
The idea is probably a good one, but not using tires.
In the length of time spent and the predicted time frame, I would think that someone could manufacture an inflatable device that would start out narrower than the pipe, designed to withstand the pressures and inflatable from one end.
Sort of like a huge tough hot dog with internal cells around a pipe to give it a spine for insertion.
But then the Russians have used an atomic explosive device six times and it worked, so if stopping the leak was really the number one concern, that would have been done already.
Better to have the oil spill all over the TV than the Blagojevich trial fall out
By cutting off the damaged riser & casing to make a clean entry, to allow them to insert a spear, slips and packer, is a standard procedure to kill even the World's worst blowouts. They used this technique to kill the “Devil's Cigarette Lighter” in Saudi Arabia in the ‘60’s.
Most all wells get killed using this method. It was the first sensible thing I have heard since this fiasco started. And, the MaObama Administration has done nothing but complicate it and make it last much longer by interfering.
When you inflate something at that depth, you usually inflate it with a liquid that will float in water, such as diesel fuel. The liquid will not compress.
I believe that when they use lift bags at such depths, to lift items off the sea floor, they also use something like diesel fuel. Today they may use a more environmentally friendly liquid.
The White House pulled in James Cameron because he’s an ‘expert’ on underwater stuff from his movie making.
I guess BP doesn’t have any experts. IMO the real problem is forcing the drilling to be done in place like this. If this well were in 100 ft of water or in ANWR it would have been sealed by the 3rd day.
Try it on a small scale first. See if you can shove things into the end of your power sprayer hose while it’s shooting water. Or go to the nearest geyser and see how well you can stop it from the top while it’s going off. This girl couldn’t change a tire to save her life much less know how to use one to plug something spewing at 1000’s of psi. Does she even know what a power sprayer is?
You need to get below the exit point to even begin to stop it, honey.
Yeah, she seems to be missing a few details.
Does anybody remember the rainbow-colored goo from the 70’s that was marketed as a toy? Put a wad of the stuff on the end of a rigid straw and blow through it, and you’d get a rainbow-colored plastic “bubble” you could play with. The stuff didn’t inflate easily or evenly but it was fun. I’ve often wondered if they could use a similar technique on the pipe...similar to an angioplasty but leave the “balloon” in.
I haven’t seen anyone suggest duct tape yet...just saying.
LOL
She has no idea of the pressure involved. The idea of inflatable plugs isn’t new, plumbers use them, but they won’t hold the high pressures this well is producing.
I have this idea that don’t require it to be plugged at all. Just have a supertanker above with a pipe all the way down near the leak zone and draw in the leak taht way
It is hardly a new idea. They are called expansion plugs and I doubt that it has not already been considered.
The problem is that the friction between the plug and the wall of the pipe has to be enough to overcome the pressure of the oil in the pipe which is considerable.
I believe you are referring to Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. Man, that was great stuff. I wish I had hoarded it!
Example: at 5280 feet depth, the pressure is 2352 psi. if you inflate the tire to 2382 psi, when it's on the bottom, the tire has the same pressure it would, relative, or delta, to it being on your car, 30 psi. If you didn't have the wreckage of an oil rig platform, a mile of crumpled 21(?) inch pipe and 50+ tons of damaged valving and Blow Out Preventer sitting on top of were the oil is leaking out of the well, it might be easier to cap.
These people have seen the Hellfighters too many times. (Did you ever see cleaner burned and blown up well heads where all you had to do was lower a christmas tree onto the neat flange?)
At 10,000 psi, it would take a lot more than a cardiologist with a strong grip to inflate anything.
I heard yesterday that BP had reported major problems with this well a month before the explosion.
What is she a professor of, Woman’s Studies?
She obviously had not been around automobile tires, you cannot inflate them without a rim. Are you going to shove them down the pipe mount on steel or alloy? I hope she is planning on spinners cause their just cool. An inner tube will inflate on it’s own but is is just a thin balloon of rubber, not likely to survive the pressure or chemicals in the stream of petroleum screaming by.
She has an over inflated (pun intended) sense of her own intellect.
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