Gulf Oil Leak could get to Florida, East Coast & Atlantic

Big box didn't work

The funnel failed. There will have to be a rethink of the plan. Methane Hydrates clogged the pipe and bouyed the box. The box is off the leak again for now and they are working on ways to prevent the hydrates from building up. It brings up an interesting issue. How much methane is coming up and going into the air?
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Big box didn't work

The funnel failed. There will have to be a rethink of the plan. Methane Hydrates clogged the pipe and bouyed the box. The box is off the leak again for now and they are working on ways to prevent the hydrates from building up. It brings up an interesting issue. How much methane is coming up and going into the air?
Click to expand...

I suggest pumping Methanol into the box to dissolve the hydrates.

methane hydrate

Large amounts of methane gas are naturally released from the ocean. Methane releases are the phenomenon behind the Bermuda Triangle disappearances.
 
metalman said:
I suggest pumping Methanol into the box to dissolve the hydrates.
Click to expand...

That would be insanely expensive. I'd go with burning methane at the surface and running hot water down to the box. Or, pumping air down and burning it lower in the column. Both are challenging though, the latter by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Probably a mechanical agitator or electric heater would be the most practical.
 
Oil flow could be 16 times BP's guestimate. A heck of a lot of the oil doesn't seem to be making it to the surface. The dispersants are working which means that a lot of the oil is floating around in smaller globs somewhere in the water column and nobody really knows where it will end up.
BP doesn't want to get a better estimate of the flow. In a "we don't do body counts" kind of way they say that it would just distract them from the task at hand - which means they know they have low-balled the number, and likely on purpose.
 
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