Saturday, May 22, 2010

How to Stop the Gulf Oil Leak

The idea I'm presenting here may not reach any of the the key advisers of President Obama. However I'm going to present it here anyway. Anyone who has ears to listen will listen and I hope this idea will be delivered to them to fix this environmental disaster, unless they have already figured it out.

I almost have the feeling that they do not have the real intention to plug the hole as I have been waiting for someone to come up with a serious solution.

Basically, we have to learn from the failure of the idea of putting a gigantic concrete cap on top of the leak. It was the methane gas that basically made the concrete cap to float (or tilt) before it reaches down to the bottom of the ocean and seal the leak.

The simplest way to seal the gushing oil leak is to make a 100-200 feet long concrete pole, the diameter of which of one end is about two inches and gradually become thicker so that the diameter of the other end becomes about the twice of the size of the drilled oil hole's diameter. Also make sure to put a at least 50 feet long two inch diameter steel metal rod to stick out of the smaller diameter side of the concrete pole. And lower it vertically and slowly so that the long steel metal rod becomes the guide so that the pole does not miss the hole using the underwater camera.

The physically (and mathematically) correct way to design the correct sized concrete pole is to find the total gushing force by multiplying the outpouring pressure and the area of the hole. And then the weight(mass times 9.8m/sec^2) of the whole concrete pole has to be at least 10 - 50 times larger than the net outpouring force.

I just read in the news that BP is planning to use some kind of gigantic funnel type concrete to plug the hole. I think the idea is in the right direction but the key point here is that there is no point to make the upper side of the diameter of the "funnel" any more bigger than twice of the size of the hole. The wider the area the stronger the push out force it gets and the bigger weight will be needed. They should try to make the "funnel" plug very long to stabilize its downward movement while it is being lowered down.

The advantage of this method is that the enormous out pouring pressure of the gushing oil and the methane gas will not stop the lowering effort of this sharp pointed, long concrete "tooth pick" going down the deep water and plug that nasty "fire ant hole".

This is the only way to plug the hole 100% clean. Throwing down the rocks and debris toward the hole won't work because they will be pushed out of the entrance of the hole because of the sheer pressure of the outpouring force before they reach the bottom of the ocean.

I wonder why this type of contingency plan has not been adopted by the off shore oil drill company in case this kind of disaster happens because, as you all know, Murphy's law says "What can happen will happen".