Ideas Modeled From Comments Of Our Members.

Corporal Willy posted 2010-06-10

Designs from Members Comments 

By Corporal Willy, June 9Th 2010

      Hardly a day goes by when I do not get some really great ideas, comments and suggestions left on my blogs about this Gulf Oil Spill.  I am truly humbled by the response and excellent ideas coming from this engineering.com membership.  Now I want to highlight some of those ideas the members gave to the world and see if I can do them justice.  I’ll use SolidWorks and do the best that I can to create 3D models of those ideas so we can all “see” it better.  In this first one I am going to use some of my own ideas along with others that were submitted.  Please use your imaginations a little bit here.  I am not a professional user of the program and I am still learning it.

       In this first sequence of screen shots you will see my representation of a Blow Out Preventer like BP has on the bottom in the Gulf.  It also shows my idea of a Top Hat which will be the real focus here.

We are now moving in closer with an ROV and camera setup. 

 

Getting in closer now to bring down the Top Hat and mate it to the BOP Section.

 

Here we are getting into a close enough position that we can guide the Top Hat onto the fast moving oil under high pressures.  This Top Hat would have to be engineered to do this job with the appropriate technical expertise to deliver it and install it.  This whole presentation is meant only to be an idea guide.

 Now we are almost there to place the Top Hat onto the well bore pipe.

 

The Top Hat is locked down now and the plumes of escaping oil will be coming out of those four equilateral triangles. 

Now that the Top Hat is locked in place we have to make sure that the flange and locks do not separate so we must bring down the Donut Seal Bladder.  It is lowered in place but has very little water pressure pumped into it at this time.  There is just enough pressure to make it keep its shape for proper placement.

Now we have the Donut Shaped Sealing Bladder in place and we “blow it up” in order to get a very tight fit over the flange and associated parts.

Here is a look from down below.

We start closing off the four triangular vents.  This can be done electrically or hydraulically.

Almost closed off now and how fast this can be done should use experience as a guide.  However, it is my hope that this combination of locks and a sealing bladder would allow a closure within an hour or two at the most while pumps are running on the ships needed on the surface to deal with this crude oil.

Vents are fully closed off now so there would be a bare minimum of oil leaking into the ocean.

In this next screen shot we back away in our ROV to monitor the pumping progress.  This is a combination of one of my own ideas and one suggested by a member using a heavy rubber inflatable bladder or donut if you prefer to call it.

These ideas can be expanded upon with other ideas that I will try to convey to the members.  It takes time to do and I can only try to read the minds of the members, in order to model their ideas and post them.  Hope you liked my green ocean here. 

I just learned today that my idea as I modeled it here would never work because of pressures and stresses I have never learned about.  This has already been told to me by some of our members.  I am a Dreamer and they are Engineers.  Big difference there but I keep on trying.  Comments anyone?  Bye.