1. For pipelines to be built in arctic area, what special measures need to be ta
ID: 975334 • Letter: 1
Question
1. For pipelines to be built in arctic area, what special measures need to be taken to protect the pipelines?
2. What was the largest oil spill in the US history? What were the details of the spill? What were the environmental consequences? On the average, what is the amount of spill happening every month in the world?
3. What are the three major methods of buying crude oil today? Define the methods.
4. What was Big Inch? What was Little Big Inch? What were they used for?
5. What’s the general process of a refinery?
Explanation / Answer
1) Let me consider perspective technologies of an inshore pipeline construction. The main pipeline construction challenges will be discussed in terms of Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. It is intended for oil delivery, which is extracted in Prudhoe-Bay field in the north ofAlaska, and then it is transported southward to the port of the city ofValdiz. It crosses the State ofAlaskafrom the north to the south, its length being1288 kmand diameter being1220 mm. It is made from steel pipes, with yield point being 422-492 P and pipe thickness ranging from11,7 mmin the level land to14,3 mmin hilly regions where it is required to increase pipeline working pressure.
Most part of pipeline is located above the ground sitting on the top of above-ground supports which are located in 123 sections of pipeline system where soil and ice sheets are unstable because of summer thawing or operation temperature impact.
The underground sections of the discussed pipeline are supported on box beams in order to cope with pipeline expansion and contraction by sliding horizontally and longitudinally on the support beam. There are pipe expansions in the middle of pipe beam span. The distance between the earth surface and pipe is usually0,9 m. It make possible to prevent snow banks just under the pipeline and pipe temperature influence on snow sheet.
2) The Deepwater Horizon oil spill ) began on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. Following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a sea-floor oil gusher flowed for 87 days, until it was capped on 15 July 2010. Eleven people went missing and were never found. The US Government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3). After several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on 19 September 2010.
The spill area hosts 8,332 species, including more than 1,270 fish, 604 polychaetes, 218 birds, 1,456 mollusks, 1,503 crustaceans, 4 sea turtles and 29 marine mammals. Between May and June 2010, the spill waters contained 40 times more Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) than before the spill. PAHs are often linked to oil spills and include carcinogens and chemicals that pose various health risks to humans and marine life. The PAHs were most concentrated near the Louisiana Coast, but levels also jumped 2–3 fold in areas off Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. PAHs can harm marine species directly and microbes used to consume the oil can reduce marine oxygen levels. The oil contained approximately 40% methane by weight, compared to about 5% found in typical oil deposits. Methane can potentially suffocate marine life and create "dead zones" where oxygen is depleted.
approxinately 335 tons per month are spill.
4) The big inch and little big inch, collectively known as the inch pipelines, are petroleum pipelines extending from Texas to New Jersey, built between 1942 to 1944 as emergency war measures in the U.S. Before WWII, petroleum products were transported from the oil fields of Texas to the north-eastern states by oil tanker.
5) Generally, crude petroleum is heated and changed into a gas. The hot gases are passed into the bottom of a distillation column and become cooler as they move up the height of the column. As the gases cool below their boiling point, they condense into a liquid. The liquids are then drawn off the distilling column at specific heights, ranging from heavy resids at the bottom, raw diesel fuels in the mid-sections, and raw gasoline at the top. These raw fractions are then processed further to make several different finished products.
Although all fractions of petroleum find uses, the greatest demand is for gasoline. One barrel of crude petroleum contains only 30-40% gasoline. Transportation demands require that over 50% of the crude oil be "converted" into gasoline. To meet this demand some petroleum fractions must be converted to gasoline. This may be done by cracking — breaking down large molecules of heavy heating oil and resids; reforming — changing molecular structures of low quality gasoline molecules; and isomerization — rearranging the atoms in a molecule so that the product has the same chemical formula but has a different structure, such as converting normal butane to isobutene.
Generally, the simplest refineries consist of crude, vacuum, reforming and some hydrotreating capacity. The next level of complexity adds cat cracking and some additional hydrotreating. The most complex refineries add coking, morehydrotreating and hydrocracking.
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