Unknown pressures, random spaces, binary fluids and unpredictability.

  This comes down to predicting turbidity events between binary fluids and Bingham plastic fluids(Non-Newtonian ) in a random space/s....with some other things thrown in just to fck thing up a little more.




…they cannot predict..they can only hope for the best, maybe some natural bridging…..same effect that pouring sandy water through a strainer will produce….hopefully, when they start to do the shut-in test of the new cap…

..sand will pack into the equipment once they close the first valve. This oil does have a very high sand/particulate content. It only makes sense that any fluid contained will seek any holes in the lower part BOP stack or well riser/surrounding area., if any, ….probably. Why they chose NOT to cut the whole stack away, and work direct from the well riser is…interesting…..we’ll see how big any cracks/holes are…..of course by now, we all know where the sand is coming from…maybe any eroded pockets in the seafloor can bridge with the sediment/sand…

The well riser that connects to the bottom of the structure everybody calls the Blow out preventer, is actually a series of different mechanical systems stacked on top of each other. ...a series of valves and gates.

Adding 75k' short tons (2k) to the top of an already damaged structure makes about as much sense as building a house on a lop-sided foundation.

Most sub-sea structures are tied it to the floor with cable. It's a 4 way tie-down , 4 directions, from one point at the top and goes to 3 points at the seafloor, so at the sea-floor, it's actually 12 cable anchors....operating at least 15 ROV's around this must be incredible difficult.

with the explosion and sinking of "the horizon" this would have most likely caused unseen damage to the casing, cement job, and o-rings in this pipe.... But basically, any imperfections in the pipe would create issues, major issues as time goes by.

Given how deep ocean currents are very strong and unpredictable, salt water is very dense at this depth 35/35% saturation's...this just adds to the difficulty.

I think that there are some large spaces that have been created under the seafloor, randomly. Oil follows all sorts of natural pathways underground...there are channels that run for mile and miles, they are driven by brine-water-tables. The final product we see is a result of many factors. Trying to say that one "thing" in a natural system is only caused by one "thing"...holds water like pantyhose.

abiogenic/abiotic/methogenic/etc, etc, it's all just steps in the process that gives us the final product we see in the reservoirs

I really wish we could see what the 2-D and 3-D modeling of the area is....
Gases dissolved in a liquid will expand as they rise, as pressure is decreased, volume is increased. Charle's law of volumetric expansion is a good place to start if you are interested..

In the fields of engineering and fluid hydrodynamics, the study of the effects of cavitation reveal that it occurs when pressure suddenly drops in a fluid column. It is what destroys boat propellers and the interior of pumps . The destructive ( and potentially creative ...bubble fusion ) power of cavitation is incredible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation

One of the things revealed in the course of observations, has been that when the flow of fluid encounters a path that is anything but straight, it causes minute waves of pressure that travel backward through the fluid. This what compresses the gasses dissolved.

Large parts of the cement casing lining the wellbore has been destroyed. This has been revealed in the news..

When the fluid meets the porous rock ,

( estimated to be around 10-30% by the geological studies of this area I've read )

It starts the process of erosion. As it erodes the cavity it invades, it creates a randomly shaped chamber, which creates random fluctuations and backward pressure waves in the fluid column. The pressure waves cause the cavitation, which in turn excavates the other the spaces along the fluid column . Think about what happens when you put your thumb over the end of a garden hose. The total sum of the power expressed in the action is covered to kinetic energy. The force you apply to the hose..is transferred to the fluid.


Watch the video at the bottom of my blog to see a runaway sub-floor methane blowout caused by BP in Vietnam, in 1993


Flow in pipes is really determined at the smaller level by what's called ..face tensions. Particulates in the oil, dissolved gases/vs non dissolved gases, etc, etc,

For an object with a smooth surface, and non-fixed separation points — like a sphere or circular cylinder — the drag coefficient may vary

Oil is a binary fluid , binary fluids are actually understood very little in terms of fluid dynamics, very unpredictable increases of density and such....2 different things together....emulsions are binary fluids...like salad dressing.......

Complex fluids are binary mixtures that have a coexistence between two phases: solid-liquid (suspensions or solutions of macromolecules such as polymers), solid-gas (granular), liquid-gas (foams) and liquid-liquid (emulsions). They exhibit unusual mechanical responses to applied stress or strain due to the geometrical constraints that the phase coexistence imposes. The mechanical response includes transitions between solid-like and fluid-like behavior as well as fluctuations. Their mechanical properties can be attributed to characteristics such as high disorder, caging, and clustering on multiple length scales.
The dynamics of the particles in complex fluids are an area of current research. Energy lost due to friction may be a nonlinear function of the velocity and normal forces. The topological inhibition to flow by the crowding of constituent particles is a key element in these systems. Under certain conditions, including high densities and low temperatures, when externally driven to induce flow, complex fluids are characterized by irregular intervals of solid-like behavior followed by stress relaxations due to particle rearrangements. The dynamics of these systems are highly nonlinear in nature. The increase in stress by an infinitesimal amount or a small displacement of a single particle can result in the difference between an arrested state and fluid-like behavior.
Although many materials found in nature can fit into to the class of complex fluids, very little is well understood about them. Inconsistent and controversial conclusions concerning their material properties still persists. The careful study of these systems may lead to "new physics" and new states of matter. For example, it has been suggested that these systems can jam and a "jamming phase diagram" can be used to consider how these systems can jam and unjam. It is not known whether further research will demonstrate these findings, or whether such a theoretical framework will prove useful. As yet this large body of theoretical work has been poorly supported with experiments

that's why erosion is happening so fast...........as far as meeting/opposing densities in certain constraints..here's a very beautiful fractal graphic of the function. Quite haunting in light of recent event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_function

Functions which might prove the stability of some equilibrium ....relief wells....are called Lyapunov-candidate-functions. There is no general method to construct or find a Lyapunov-candidate-function which proves the stability of an equilibrium, and the inability to find a Lyapunov function is inconclusive with respect to stability, which means, that not finding a Lyapunov function doesn't mean that the system is unstable. For dynamical systems (e.g. physical systems), conservation laws can often be used to construct a Lyapunov-candidate-function.

in terms of them being able to easily know what happens when you know what the shapes encountered in the system are...

In mathematics and physics, a phase space, introduced by Willard Gibbs in 1901, is a space in which all possible states of a system are represented, with each possible state of the system corresponding to one unique point in the phase space. For mechanical systems, the phase space usually consists of all possible values of position and momentum variables. A plot of position and momentum variables as a function of time is sometimes called a phase plot or a phase diagram. Phase diagram, however, is more usually reserved in the physical sciences for a diagram showing the various regions of stability of the thermodynamic phases of a chemical system, which consists of pressure, temperature, and composition.
In a phase space, every degree of freedom or parameter of the system is represented as an axis of a multidimensional space. For every possible state of the system, or allowed combination of values of the system's parameters, a point is plotted in the multidimensional space. Often this succession of plotted points is analogous to the system's state evolving over time. In the end, the phase diagram represents all that the system can be, and its shape can easily elucidate qualities of the system that might not be obvious otherwise. A phase space may contain very many dimensions. For instance, a gas containing many molecules may require a separate dimension for each particle's x, y and z positions and momenta as well as any number of other properties.

 Look similar to something you have seen in nature before.....?   shells.......spirals.......DNA.....80/20 ratio.....
....the golden mean...yada yada...easy to calculate answers when you know all the constraints imposed by meeting factors that form the end sum product being scrutinized.....all matter follows the same thing..lol...silly isn't it?.....since we don't know....and they won't tell the public mind....we might be screwed.

People tend to assume that the only intersection with oil and gas is at the bottom of this well.


..it's not..


..physical systems in nature just don't work like that....." banging head on desk "


The density of the sub-floor in this area ranges from 10-30%, 30 is reaching towards the structure of pumice . The density and location of hydrates found is directly dependent on rock porosity. They will form where they can in the substrata, normally, they are held in place by the weight of the ocean and the rock/sediment above them. But combined with the factors of heat, volumetric expansion, and phase transitions, when heat comes in contact with it , it starts the process, and cannot be stopped until the gas created that can and has "shifted phase " a hydrate pocket becomes a runaway event. That's why it's important for BP to release the information to the collective mind.

We cannot help if we do not understand. We cannot start to understand until we are given the information.
Reynolds transport theorem (also known as the Leibniz-Reynolds transport theorem), or in short Reynolds theorem, is a three-dimensional generalization of the Leibniz integral rule. This theorem is used to compute derivatives of integrated quantities.

Reynolds transport theorem can be simply stated as - What was already there plus what goes in minus what comes out is equal to what is there
 

 ...if they'd give us the information..we could maybe all help find a solution...matter does follow laws....hello..?

Then you got cavitation to consider, probably one of the main reasons for massive erosion..Cavitation is caused any time pressure is increased in fluid, it doesn't matter where the increase in pressure happens or how, it is the expression of the unwillingness of the vapor to compress....it is a peek into what happens

....or what will happen when water goes super-critical , when matter has nowhere to go but out
at the horizon of super-critical event with water , for example , a gas/will effuse through solids when it has nowhere to go
sorry....not a vapor per se,.... don't mean to confuse anyone, ... " a dissolved gas in fluid suspension "

 ...this next bit is from Yahoo poster.." justfound "...thank you...

" ok, humans are trained to think a certain way, depending on what you do in life. a scientist's thought is not the same as a businessman's thought. Scientist would say that the best way is to protect the environment, even if it costs more, because the scientist is concerned about what studies, for he studies what he loves.... A business man will say that the most cost effective way is the best way, because the business mand is concerned most about what he studies (money), and the environment will suffer at the expense of profit... The people in charge of this drilling where businessmen, not scientists, so profit took precedence, at the expense of we know what... ... us "small people" are told what they want to tell us, and they can figure out what our reaction will be, and that is what they already know before they tell us what they tell us.... so yes, we are being played like a violin............ .......HOWEVER, the events taking place is beyond their control, it is out of control, and they cannot control it. all their attempts have failed, and their best attempts will fail. they will fail, and have done an epic fail..... We all just don't know it yet....."


this next bit is from Yahoo poster   "yastockyguy"....thanks....critical mass thought solutions...that's what I am talking about people......keep it coming.

"  If I may, I would like to add a little more to your explanation.

It only takes something like 32 pipe diameters before we achieve fully developed flow (I'm going from memory here, and gas dynamics was a long time ago for me). With a pipe some 18,000 feet long, the flow has a fully developed turbulent profile. It is a high energy flow.

One point we seem to be missing in this discussion is that the flow is almost certainly mass-flow-rate limited. Assuming down well pressures that are in the range of what is being talked about seriously (40,000-100,000 psi), a normal shock wave may well be forming in the pipe, or will at some point; by "normal" I mean at 90 degrees to the flow.

The long pipe run helps contain this because the boundary layer friction losses show up in the flow as a reduction in pressure and the pressure difference is what allows the formation of the shock wave, which is what limits the flow rate. As the total pressure (static plus dynamic) at the well head exceeds 5,100 psi, we can expect to see a shock wave form in the pipe.

As the pipe run is eaten away below the seafloor, and a plenum of sorts is created by eating away the rock around where the pipe used to be, the situation is created for a sonic flow through the pipe. I.e., the oil is flowing through the pipe at Mach 1 (as determined by the temperature and kinematic viscosity of the oil).

I'm not an oil guy and have never had need to figure out the kinematic viscosity of Hi-E crude, nor do I know the temperature at which it is exiting the well. Worse, this is a mixture of high pressure methane gas intermixed in the column with slugs of liquid crude, so it may not make much sense to determine what the mass flow rate limit of the crude would be through the well head without also figuring the mass flow rate limit for the methane, to say nothing of the harmonic oscillations of the pressures within the pipe as the liquid slugs "bounce" on springs of compressed methane which could easily result in local pressures as high as 200Kpsi, exacerbating the cavitation problems.

It's a fascinating problem, though."

In the end, I think they will end up trying a series of concurrent opposing/fluctuating pressures in waves that are temporally offset( by what degree, I have no clue ) to try and " capture " the flow . It is obvious, I think, that there is a large "pocket " they are tapped into. Since engineers have no experience with the event , studies of fluid hydrodynamics really have no modeling to predict it.

....now for a second, I'd like to go back to the subject of using sound to alter fluid densities....I talked about it in great length under the topic at the top " capture and tame the oil leak "

Stokes' law (sound attenuation)

According to this law attenuation of sound α is proportional to the dynamic viscosity η, square of the sound frequency ω, and reciprocally proportional to the fluid density ρ and cubic power of sound speed V

The parameter volume viscosity is surprisingly little known despite its fundamental role for fluid dynamics at high frequencies. This parameter appears in Navier-Stokes equation if it is written for compressible fluid, as described in the most books on general hydrodynamics , and the acoustics^.
There has been substantial theoretical development in this field since Stokes’ pioneering work. It has brought one important correction to the Stokes law. It turns out that in addition to the dynamic viscosity the parameter of volume viscosity η^v also affects the total attenuation according to the following relationship:

 ....so again....I think that sound is the key here in the solution.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes%27_law_%28sound_attenuation%29


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes%27_law_%28sound_attenuation%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_function