MasterCord
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Joined: 7/6/2009
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For what it's worth....several of my clients' vessels are operating in the Gulf, not related to the spill. They are transiting the spill site and beyond, moving petroleum and chem products cross-Gulf. Many of the boats have raw water machinery cooling systems. In such a system, the cooling water circulating through the main engines, or generator engines, or air conditioning chllers, etc. is fresh water operating in a closed loop - just like the cooling water in your car engine.
Your car engine circulates that water through your radiator to cool it after it removes heat from your engine. The radiator allows the hot water to be cooled by the ambient air passing through the radiator. Because the air passing over the radiator core is cooler than the water returning from your engine, it cools the water as the water passes through the radiator's many water passages that expose the water to the cool air on the other side. Therefore your radiator, is what is known as a "heat exchanger".
Because the horspower of our main engines and other equipment, radiators to cool that volume of cooling water are impractical. So we use different types of heat exchangers. Sometimes we use what are known as keel coolers of various kinds. But high horsepower engines are generally cooled by what we refer to as a "raw water" or "central" type cooling system. In this type of system, the engine has, just like your car, a closed cooling circuit that circulates fresh water through the engine jacket water and aftercooler circuits, to heat exchangers located in the engine room. Unlike a radiator however, the heat xchanger (plate or tube-and-shell type) relies on the hot fresh water returning from the engine, to flow past sea water on the other side of the surface the fresh water is circulating through. In other words, the hot water in essence passes through a pipe, and that pipe in turn is inside another pipe - with colder sea water passing by going the opposite way between the two pipes. The sea water in the space between the two pipes which is colder, removes the heat from the fresh water inside the smaller pipe. The fresh water returns to the engine cooled now, the salt water returns overboard to the sea at a slightly higher temperature.
That whole explanation is designed to help understand what I'm going to offer about the spill. Over thime, the engineers on these boats have been checking the interiors of the heat exchangers on their vessels, checking the salt water side for evidence of oil that was pulled in with sea water, and cleaning the heat exchangers when it is found because the oil reduces the effectiveness of the heat exchanger. some have installed oil content monitors in the inlet side of the sea water pumps that feed the heat exchangers and these detectors are able to detect oil in concentrations as low as 5 PPM (parts-per-million). The bottom line is that over time the oil content of the sea water has been declining to the point where there is demonstrably little - or even no oil - in the sea water, in many places where it "should" be or has been in the recent past, or was predicted by movement models, to be headed. The sea water is pulled into the boats via high sea chests (....perhaps 7 feet below the water surface) and low sea chests (...as deep as 25 feet below the surface), and the vessels are transiting the Gulf pretty much all over the place, and have operated around the Florida Straits, and northeast into the Gulf Stream. Where oil is still being found in the water, I'm told the PPM is lower and lower over time. The reality is the oil is dispersing in some locations previously inundated with it to the point where it is becoming harder to even detect - let alone see. Of course we see a part of the water column only 25 feet deep....but that is where many predicted the oil would collect.
Even give the size of the spill, it is a microscopic amount of oil compared to the volume of sea water in the Gulf alone, (...there is scientific evidence the Gulf leaches that much oil a year naturally...see below...) let alone in the world's oceans. This is why it is dispersing as it is. I don't blame people for being pissed this happened - and increasingly it is obvious that it was 100% preventable. Thankfully, the permanent damage may well not to be anywhere as near catastrophic as many people believe. The worst damage occurs when the oil gets ashore which of course has no efficient way to disperse the oil or break it up in any quick timeframe.
But a lot of things spew into the oceans every day. Here are a few to learn about for those who are interested....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
...and something that may well open a few eyes...this is from a National Research Council report.....
"Scientists don’t know yet exactly which bacterial species are present in these plumes. The Gulf has a “leaky” seafloor, populated with natural seeps that discharge between 560,000 to 1.4 million barrels of crude oil every year, according to “Oil in the Sea III,” a 2003 National Research Council report on oil spills. Also hydrocarbons in general are ubiquitous in the ocean and can be found not only in seeping oil but also in plant waxes and lobster shells. Many marine bacteria have evolved to consume these hydrocarbons, and now the spill has allowed these bacteria to follow their food beyond their natural habitat near oil seeps at the bottom of the Gulf."
A link to the story.... and a very interesting scientific analysis of the issues.....
http://www.oceanleadership.org/2010/microbes-to-the-rescue/
Just offering some fact-based input...
MC
< Message edited by MasterCord -- 8/18/2010 8:48:26 AM >
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RE: Purple looking jelly stuff, three feet thick, float... - 
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