Thoughts on the BP oil-rig disaster

[Keleth]

....

Well why don't we just make the magnets huge and run off of that? Limitless power! Mwahahahaha

[Alondro]

One idea kicked around in early 2000 was the use of large, frictionless flywheels to capture excess energy for storage.  While it worked in concept, to build such flywheels AND keep them frictionless proved exceedingly difficult and crushingly expensive.

[Turnsky]

http://tinyurl.com/252ze5a

but hey, that's business for you. Looks like i may be at least partially right after all in saying this whole deal has the potential to sink BP.

[RobbieThe1st]

....

Well why don't we just make the magnets huge and run off of that? Limitless power! Mwahahahaha

What I think you are talking about is the so-called "magnet motor". This device has been designed and redesigned by crackpots and the "free energy"/"perpetual-motion" people. Whether it works or not... who knows - it all depends on who you ask. Either it simply doesn't work, and cant, or it actually -does- work, but the magnets get drained over time(essentially it ends up using the magnets as a "battery" of a sort - the energy being put in when it was made).
If this device is A, possible and B, can be made reliably, it would solve a -lot- of problems. Unfortunately, I don't see them powering cars yet.

On the subject of electric vehicles, personally I'm not so sure about them. Mainly because of battery technology.
Currently the best thing we have is Lithium-ion-type batteries. They may have a fairly nice storage to weight/volume ratio... but they are also A, full of toxic lithium, B, require highly-precise charging mechanisms, and C, lose capacity with age.
If we -did- have everyone driving electric cars, while it might mean less oil used, there would probably be as much if not more impact from all the lithium batteries being produced... and then recycled and produced again every few years as they age beyond usability.
But, even ignoring that... I -really- don't want to see what happens when two cars - full of lithium batteries - hit each other at 60mph, as -will- happen.
There would be a good chance of something lighting the lithium on fire, either through tearing a hole in the battery case, or shorting the cells together... and when you have enough cells to power a -car-...

So yea. Until we come up with a good, safe battery to use in these vehicles, I'm not sure I want too many of them on the road.

-Rob

[Tapewolf]

What I think you are talking about is the so-called "magnet motor". This device has been designed and redesigned by crackpots and the "free energy"/"perpetual-motion" people. Whether it works or not... who knows - it all depends on who you ask. Either it simply doesn't work, and cant, or it actually -does- work, but the magnets get drained over time(essentially it ends up using the magnets as a "battery" of a sort - the energy being put in when it was made).
If this device is A, possible and B, can be made reliably, it would solve a -lot- of problems. Unfortunately, I don't see them powering cars yet.

Yeah, I came up with that idea when I was a kid.  I figured that if you could get a material that shielded magnetism you could build a rotating shutter mechanism that allowed it to keep spinning, similar to what happens in an electric motor where the poles are switched electronically, only in my case you'd be using the inertia to keep it turning until it came in range of the next pole.  It would probably require a starting turn to get it running.

I still think it would work, but it would leach away the magnetism from the poles (which I suspected at the time) and now that I think about it, it would almost certainly magnetize the rotor.  So it certainly wouldn't keep running indefinitely, and you probably wouldn't get a huge amount of torque out of it.

On the subject of electric vehicles, personally I'm not so sure about them. Mainly because of battery technology.
...
So yea. Until we come up with a good, safe battery to use in these vehicles, I'm not sure I want too many of them on the road.

How about fuel cells?

[Turnsky]

let us not forget, that Oil does not necessarily mean "just fossil fuels", if you have a look at the petrochemical industry as a whole, you'll quickly learn that it also includes practically every single item that's constructed out of plastic, plastic coatings, and other numerous blends.

you need only to look around you, even at your keyboards and monitors to realize that fact. it just so happens that transport is only the larger part of the petrochemical equation, and folks tend to fail to look at the larger picture... even environmentalists.

[Tapewolf]

let us not forget, that Oil does not necessarily mean "just fossil fuels", if you have a look at the petrochemical industry as a whole, you'll quickly learn that it also includes practically every single item that's constructed out of plastic, plastic coatings, and other numerous blends.

Actually, that's what I was saying earlier.  If we were to stop wasting it as fuel, there would be considerably less pressure on supplies for plastics and other more subtle uses.

[Tezkat]

On the subject of electric vehicles, personally I'm not so sure about them. Mainly because of battery technology.
Currently the best thing we have is Lithium-ion-type batteries. They may have a fairly nice storage to weight/volume ratio... but they are also A, full of toxic lithium, B, require highly-precise charging mechanisms, and C, lose capacity with age.
If we -did- have everyone driving electric cars, while it might mean less oil used, there would probably be as much if not more impact from all the lithium batteries being produced... and then recycled and produced again every few years as they age beyond usability.
But, even ignoring that... I -really- don't want to see what happens when two cars - full of lithium batteries - hit each other at 60mph, as -will- happen.
There would be a good chance of something lighting the lithium on fire, either through tearing a hole in the battery case, or shorting the cells together... and when you have enough cells to power a -car-...

So yea. Until we come up with a good, safe battery to use in these vehicles, I'm not sure I want too many of them on the road.

Of course! What kind of idiot would risk their lives in a vehicle with an energy dense,  potentially flammable--even explosive--power source? Oh, wait...


To be fair, there have been some fairly impressive innovations in lithium battery technology over the last several years. By the time electric vehicles see wide scale adoption, the technology should be mature enough to address most of the current concerns over safety, range, and longevity.

let us not forget, that Oil does not necessarily mean "just fossil fuels", if you have a look at the petrochemical industry as a whole, you'll quickly learn that it also includes practically every single item that's constructed out of plastic, plastic coatings, and other numerous blends.

you need only to look around you, even at your keyboards and monitors to realize that fact. it just so happens that transport is only the larger part of the petrochemical equation, and folks tend to fail to look at the larger picture... even environmentalists.

Oooh! Don't forget agriculture, either. Fertilizers, pesticides, etc. are all produced from fossil fuels (mainly oil). Industrial agriculture uses more oil for fertilizer than any other aspect of production (e.g. machinery, irrigation, etc.). Eliminating modern, petrochemical based fertilizers would drop crop production to a fraction of current levels. We're already seeing this happening in poorer places unable to cope with the massive spike in the price of oil--and thus fertilizers. And in places like North Korea where political issues (most notably the collapse of the USSR and its oil supply) absolutely decimated agricultural production due to lack of fertilizers.

Oil scarcity potentially leads not just to less people driving SUVs, but to starvation on a large scale.

Actually, that's what I was saying earlier.  If we were to stop wasting it as fuel, there would be considerably less pressure on supplies for plastics and other more subtle uses.

Ah... but can we pull something like that off soon enough to matter? Even converting most vehicles over to hybrid power, let alone pure electric, is something that will happen on a scale of decades, not years. Solar panels still aren't that cheap or efficient. People whine that wind farms give them headaches. We seem to be long past peak uranium. Cities are sprawling messes, designed around the notion that we'd have cheap oil and big cars forever. Places close to work are often not very nice places to live. Large public works projects like urban rail systems can take a decade build. The system is practically designed to waste oil as fuel.

And in the meantime... what? Populations are still growing. Countries are still growing. Or trying to, at least. Given that any economy that wants to grow needs access to energy supplies that--let's face it--are no longer sufficiently plentiful to go around, recession is pretty much the only thing that can keep oil demand in check. And as all those nice big oil fields continue to deplete, even economic suffering won't be effective for long. I doubt that very many players in the energy industry seriously believe that we're still on the happy side of the Hubbert curve.

The global economic, political, and social impacts of not having enough oil are not pretty.

And we know that there's a lot of oil buried deep under the sea. For instance, 49 million years ago, an ocean spanning carpet of Azolla plants sucked enough carbon out of the atmosphere to drop global CO2 levels by 80% and cool the planet enough to ice over both poles for perhaps the first time ever. All that yummy carbon is now sitting below the Arctic Ocean, much of it as oil. Notwithstanding the notion that putting it back into the atmosphere is probably a Bad Idea, it's sitting there for anyone with economic and political will to grab it.

Drill baby, drill?

[Shachza]

All that yummy carbon is now sitting below the Arctic Ocean, much of it as oil. Notwithstanding the notion that putting it back into the atmosphere is probably a Bad Idea, it's sitting there for anyone with economic and political will to grab it.

Drill baby, drill?

I don't see what the problem is.  The dinosaurs seemed to do quite well in a higher-CO2 environment.   

[Reese Tora]

Oooooh, magnet power sources.  I've only ever seen one actually built.  All it was was two plastic rings one inside the other with magnets in them.  the pseudo science claim was that, since there was one magnet less in the inner ring than the outer, the imbalance would somehow make the motor turn forever and do work.  The video of it made it pretty easy to figure out how it really worked; the back of the wheel was off camera for half the video- up until it had gotten up to speed, and an electric motor was clearly audible while it was spinning up. 2+2 = they used a power tool to spin up their fake motor and then moved the camera to show that the device was free standing once the tool used to impart spin was removed.

The bottom line is, power has to come from somewhere, it cannot be created or destroyed.

Of course! What kind of idiot would risk their lives in a vehicle with an energy dense,  potentially flammable--even explosive--power source? Oh, wait...

Different levels of volatility, and gasoline has the decency to require a fairly specific ratio of fuel to air to be dangerously explosive.

Honestly, I don't think that battery powered electric cars will be viable because of charging factors.  unless you can get a battery to recieve a full charge safely in a few minutes, something else that can be quickly fueled up (hydrogen fuel cells, for instance) will be a better alternative.  You can't have a car that can only drive for four or five hours and then needs to rest and charge for the remaining time. (The Tesla roadster, the current state of the art in electric cars, has the best range that I'm aware of, and they list the best charger for their car as granting 56 miles of travel per hour of charging and a range of 250 miles per charge- assuming rest areas properly equipped with that charger, you would spend more time charging than driving on a long trip, and you can't call AAA to bring you a gallon of electricity if you break down half way between Middletown and Nowhereville)

I agree that cars that use electric motors will ultimately be the way of the future, though- something that uses a system similar to diesel-electric trains or the M1-A1 tank's turbine engine whereby a strong engine is used to produce electricity that is fed to motors- this can be finely controlled to improve fuel efficiency and give better traction during turns or on slippery roads, would reduce the number of moving parts in a car like the very expensive to replace transmission, and may even include a small battery that can store a little extra electricity through regenerative breaking(as with the Prius) to reduce fuel consumption later.

oh, right, oil spill... pollution bad, government and corporate corruption bad, grr...

Did you know, the government agency that was supposed to be auditing BP's platform approved today another off shore drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana?  This one is going to be in only 100 feet of water, though, not the several thousand feet that is currently stymieing efforts to stop the spill of oil from Deep Horizon's pipe.

[eryogigasee]

Shame there's no way to convert that excess population into oil...

If someone could get a working black powder motor then that could potentially solve some applications.  That said, the Mythbusters failed to, and I'm betting the only way to do it would involve mixing it with oil, like a small rocket engine.

Additional good news:  BP represents 8% of British state pensions.  Considering my local council lost £50000 to a certain Icelandic bank last year you'd have thought they'd check their investments.

[KarlOmega1]

Alll I can say is that if BP doesn't get off their bums and solve the problem, much of the fishing industry in the gulf is going to be out of business (can't sell tainted fish). Also, if the gulf keeps filling up with oil, the Gulf of Mexico might as well be renamed "The Oil Ocean Zone".

[Reese Tora]

Alll I can say is that if BP doesn't get off their bums [snip]

It's not like they aren't making an effort to stop the leak.  You can only do so much at one time.

Note that they have finished cutting away the damaged part of the pipe and are now in the process of putting a temporary cap on it. (unless they have finished or failed by this time, which I doubt since I heard a news report about the cutting being completed just two hours ago as of this posting.)

[Keleth]

Shame there's no way to convert that excess population into oil...

If someone could get a working black powder motor then that could potentially solve some applications.  That said, the Mythbusters failed to, and I'm betting the only way to do it would involve mixing it with oil, like a small rocket engine.

Additional good news:  BP represents 8% of British state pensions.  Considering my local council lost £50000 to a certain Icelandic bank last year you'd have thought they'd check their investments.

Mythbusters isn't exactly the pinnacle of science or engineering :o

[Ryudo Lee]

Alll I can say is that if BP doesn't get off their bums and solve the problem, much of the fishing industry in the gulf is going to be out of business (can't sell tainted fish). Also, if the gulf keeps filling up with oil, the Gulf of Mexico might as well be renamed "The Oil Ocean Zone".

It will, which is my concern here.  My state's economy is based in part on the independence of our fishing industry, most notably the oysters, crabs, shrimp, and crawfish portions, all of which is or can be seriously affected by all this.  We're already seeing price hikes in oysters due to the closures of the oyster beds.  Almost half of the beds have already been closed. 

[Turnsky]

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/06/eepybirds-coke-mentos-rocket-car/

coke and mentos, the way of the future   

[VAE]

What I think you are talking about is the so-called "magnet motor". This device has been designed and redesigned by crackpots and the "free energy"/"perpetual-motion" people. Whether it works or not... who knows - it all depends on who you ask. Either it simply doesn't work, and cant, or it actually -does- work, but the magnets get drained over time(essentially it ends up using the magnets as a "battery" of a sort - the energy being put in when it was made).
If this device is A, possible and B, can be made reliably, it would solve a -lot- of problems. Unfortunately, I don't see them powering cars yet.

Yeah, I came up with that idea when I was a kid.  I figured that if you could get a material that shielded magnetism you could build a rotating shutter mechanism that allowed it to keep spinning, similar to what happens in an electric motor where the poles are switched electronically, only in my case you'd be using the inertia to keep it turning until it came in range of the next pole.  It would probably require a starting turn to get it running.

I still think it would work, but it would leach away the magnetism from the poles (which I suspected at the time) and now that I think about it, it would almost certainly magnetize the rotor.  So it certainly wouldn't keep running indefinitely, and you probably wouldn't get a huge amount of torque out of it.

I don't think so.
Magnetism of a material is caused by domain allignment.
Other forces acting on it can mess up the domains, but this is completely analogous to a common engine operating
I think that either the "magnetic shield material" would be active (as in active components, meaning it would consume energy to operate) or it would get magnetised over time... not to mention i cannot think of how could it actually work

[Tapewolf]

I don't think so.
Magnetism of a material is caused by domain allignment.
Other forces acting on it can mess up the domains, but this is completely analogous to a common engine operating

I'm not sure I follow.  Is there a bit missing?

I think that either the "magnetic shield material" would be active (as in active components, meaning it would consume energy to operate) or it would get magnetised over time...

How about mu-metal?  I can imagine it losing its effectiveness over time, though.

not to mention i cannot think of how could it actually work

The motor itself, or the physics of mu-metal?  I think mu-metal works by diverting the field somehow.

The motor itself would be something like this:


http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k216/tapewolf/scraps/magmotor.png

... the shield is on a separate rotor between the outer poles and the inner poles on the armature.  It has windows cut into it - most likely more eccentric than the ones I've illustrated - and the trick is to keep it rotating just out of phase with the armature.  The idea is that as the armature poles reach the outer poles, the shield intervenes, effectively cutting off the field and allowing it to keep rotating until it starts to be attracted by the next pole.  Otherwise it would just stop.

What might be more practical is an oscillating motion where the shutter slides open and closed - you could probably use some kind of cam mechanism to control it.

Now, the question is, assuming it works at all, how much energy you'd actually get out of it.  And I suspect the answer is 'not much'.  And I still think that over time you'd end up with the poles reaching some kind of equilibrium.

[Drayco84]

It's official...

"People" are taking notice...

[Turnsky]

http://jalopnik.com/5555628/bp-station-sign-is-beyond-irony

[Drayco84]

http://jalopnik.com/5555628/bp-station-sign-is-beyond-irony

Strange... I have this sudden urge to punch a BP exec in the face...

[Turnsky]

i also found this in my travels, useful for putting things in perspective.

http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I had an interesting conversation about this with a co-worker (who was just leaving on maternity leave). Apparently her other half works for BP.

Turns out, she says, that the problem was caused by an explosion; so far, nothing interesting or unexpected. That was caused by four independant safety devices all failing at the same time. No surprises there, either.

Here's the interesting bit. Those safety devices aren't used by BP anywhere outside the US, because they don't meet BP's internal safety requirements. They're used in the US because the rig wasn't run by BP, it was run by another company, and checked by Halliburton (now there's a name to remember), and the safety devices meet the US regulations. Now, BP apparently asked them to replace these with the ones that BP use, or at least ones that aren't prone to failure, and the other company (whose name I unfortunately can't remember just at the moment) declined because the ones they used "meet regulations".

Quite why BP isn't crucifying Halliburton and the other company in the press, we're not sure, but we suspect it's something to do with wanting to sue the pants off them. Either way, it's interesting that the same thing couldn't happen, or at least is much less likely to happen, anywhere else in the world but the US of A, isn't it?


Of course, this is all hearsay, but it does put a slightly different light on the situation, doesn't it?

[ShadesFox]

And hearsay from BP at that ;p

I hear that the real problem is that the tech and preventer systems were okay down to a few hundred feet in the continental shelf, but not for the deep waters.  If the MMS ever allows for drilling permits again it will be interesting to see if there is a new certification program for such things.

[VAE]

@Tape;
Hmm, the muddled up bit was me trying to say that in this case, during operation, the permanent magnets don't experience any forces different to what they do in normal operation, so them losing magnetism is unlikely.

Second thing to think about is that a moving magnetic field makes a current (in this case eddy currents in the mu-metal) in order to generate a magnetic field opposing the original one (Law of Lenz) ... since mumetal has a rather high permeability, this effect would be probably significant...
but then you could make the core laminated...

hmm, maybe i will think of something today - after all ,electromagnetism is a part of what will be on the electricity exam on monday

[Tapewolf]

@Tape;
Hmm, the muddled up bit was me trying to say that in this case, during operation, the permanent magnets don't experience any forces different to what they do in normal operation, so them losing magnetism is unlikely.

Well, anecdotally, horseshoe magnets invariably come with a guard linking the two poles.  I've heard that they will diminish in strength if they are left with the guard off.  Is this just a myth?
Then again, that's not really the situation that you'd get in the motor anyway, because the N and S poles I've marked would strictly be one end of a bar or cylindrical magnet.

Second thing to think about is that a moving magnetic field makes a current (in this case eddy currents in the mu-metal) in order to generate a magnetic field opposing the original one (Law of Lenz) ... since mumetal has a rather high permeability, this effect would be probably significant...

True.

hmm, maybe i will think of something today - after all ,electromagnetism is a part of what will be on the electricity exam on monday

Good luck.  If I hadn't been bitten by the computer bug, I would probably have gone into electronics or mechanical engineering myself...

[VAE]

@Tape;
Hmm, the muddled up bit was me trying to say that in this case, during operation, the permanent magnets don't experience any forces different to what they do in normal operation, so them losing magnetism is unlikely.

Well, anecdotally, horseshoe magnets invariably come with a guard linking the two poles.  I've heard that they will diminish in strength if they are left with the guard off.  Is this just a myth?

Hmm, i admit i have never seen a horseshoe magnet, only bars, but i suspect that what the guard does is helping to preserve the magnet by improving the flux linkage around the (made with the guard) circuit.
Uniform magnetic field cannot "break" a magnet as far as i know-  to demagnetise, you need to jumble up the domains either by beating it up or (better) sticking it into a coil with AC current, and slowly turning the voltage to 0.
Now this makes me think...if the field generated by the mumetal is strong enough , and the engine turns quickly (ignoring the fact that it would probably cause it not to ) it actually could jumble the magnet up!! 

Then again, that's not really the situation that you'd get in the motor anyway, because the N and S poles I've marked would strictly be one end of a bar or cylindrical magnet.

Second thing to think about is that a moving magnetic field makes a current (in this case eddy currents in the mu-metal) in order to generate a magnetic field opposing the original one (Law of Lenz) ... since mumetal has a rather high permeability, this effect would be probably significant...

True.

hmm, maybe i will think of something today - after all ,electromagnetism is a part of what will be on the electricity exam on monday

Good luck.  If I hadn't been bitten by the computer bug, I would probably have gone into electronics or mechanical engineering myself...

Thanks... in fact that is remarkably similar to me - i actually considered applying for computer science, and programming is still the one thing i am among the better folk in the year. Only difference that instead of mechanics, i find i quite like material science.
But then , from what i hear, you were a far better programmer even at my age... the biggest single thing i wrote so far was a ncurses  sudoku game.

[ooklah]

I think because of this disaster, we're going to see a very radical change in car design in the very near future instead of the mid- long term future we're currently looking at. (ie, the hybirds, electrics, and whatever else they are going to come up with.) 

In a way we can look at it as, we all drive cars, therefore we all need gas, therefore we need more oil, therefore, new places to drill are needed using tech that may not work right. So with the incoming changes to oil regulations (because it's inevitable at this point), we're going to need a very different approach to how we fuel our transportation.

[Reese Tora]

hmm... magnet denaturing does happen, but it depends on the material that the magnet is made from.  Originally, magnets were made by heating and cooling a rod of metal while holding it inside a magnetic field (generally generated by electromagnetic force)

These would be iron or steel, and could lose strength over time- or with a hard shock (ie: dropping it or hitting something with it)

cheap magnets as used in children's toys will likely be ferrite magnets (I had lots of these as a kid) because they are very cheap to make and strength isn't really important.

More modern permanent magnets used where performance is an issue are rare earth magnets (neodymium is the most common type used today.)

A quick search through Wikipedia shows that rare earth magnets can lose strength if they are heated beyond a certain point(dependent on material)

further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_magnet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_magnet

[Cvstos]

Honestly, I don't think that battery powered electric cars will be viable because of charging factors.  unless you can get a battery to recieve a full charge safely in a few minutes, something else that can be quickly fueled up (hydrogen fuel cells, for instance) will be a better alternative.  You can't have a car that can only drive for four or five hours and then needs to rest and charge for the remaining time. (The Tesla roadster, the current state of the art in electric cars, has the best range that I'm aware of, and they list the best charger for their car as granting 56 miles of travel per hour of charging and a range of 250 miles per charge- assuming rest areas properly equipped with that charger, you would spend more time charging than driving on a long trip, and you can't call AAA to bring you a gallon of electricity if you break down half way between Middletown and Nowhereville)

Actually, I've heard of batteries from Toshiba under development that have a charge time of ~5 min.

http://www.ev.com/ev-guides/ev-miscellaneous/toshibas-breakthrough-ev-battery-charges-in-5-minutes.html

A charge time that fast would put batteries in the same league as gas for range. Out of juice? Find a station and power up. And transporting power is something we're ALREADY DOING! The infrastructure is largely already there, we just need the stations. And compared to building hydrogen transport and storage, that's easy. And it's entirely possible that AAA could help you in that instance. Just put an even larger battery on a tow/helper vehicle and juice it a bit. That kind of thing is entirely possible, just needs to be built.