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Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

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Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#51

Post by icegreentea »

leobelle wrote: post #48
tokenadult wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to n…

> a shortage of single women I don't get this. Wouldn't single women also want to move to North Dakota to get a good job?

If and only if the jobs in demand have more or less equal participation between males and females. And.... that's absolutely not the case.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#52

Post by Crito »

revelation wrote: post #46
tokenadult wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to n…

I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero , it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality. There seems to be no learning in the Am…

Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2.

If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use.

There is the angle that if more natural gas were used to generate electricity, then less coal burning would be required. That certainly is an argument for getting and burning more natural gas in power plants, but barring that possibility in the present due to poor logistics, we will still be burning that coal whether the natural gas is burned off as waste, or whether it is never pumped up in the first place.

We could also spend money taking the gas and shoving it back where it came from, but that really is not practical.

The bigoted attitude towards the mid-west is uncalled for, even if you don't like what is going on in North Dakota.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#53

Post by kkwok »

tokenadult wrote: post #40
ck2 wrote: post #12

About about using the $1 Billion in natural gas they burn off every year in North Dakota for electricity instead of just heating the atmosphere. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269517/The-picture-... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/business/energy-environmen...

I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to n…

Why would converting deliquefication terminals make sense? By the time we convert them, wouldn't you expect technology transfer of fracking to have spread internationally (AND be much cheaper), making exporting less economically feasible?

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#54

Post by joeyo »

Crito wrote: post #52
revelation wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero , it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality. There seems to be no learning in the Am…

Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2. If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use. There is…

  > Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the
  > atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive
  > reasons still produces that same CO2.
True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale.

There are time-scales over which releasing CO2 is more or less harmful; I don't pretend to know the critical ones. However, it seems self evident that if that rate of release can be slowed, then its consequences will be less harmful, even if the total amount of CO2 released by T_{infinity} is exactly the same.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#55

Post by Crito »

joeyo wrote: post #54
Crito wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2. If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use. There is…

> Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the > atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive > reasons still produces that same CO2. True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now,…

> "Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale."

I assume that either way, we are going to eventually burn it until depletion. We can't keep it up forever, we will need to switch to renewable energy at some point and that renewable energy will be carbon neutral.

It's a shame that it is being wasted instead of used for something productive, but I am just not convinced that it is some sort of environmental disaster.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#56

Post by YokoZar »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #41

Tap Yellowstone's geothermal. See if we can't get greedy enough for energy extraction that we end up preventing a supervolcano.

I do wonder to what extent we can mitigate potential future volcanic activity by preemptively pulling energy out of hot spots like this.

The odds are low, but a supervolcanic detonation in Yellowstone would be one of the most serious threats to the United States (or even the planet), so if we can mitigate it slightly while actually profiting from the process that seems worth pursuing.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#57

Post by Zigurd »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
dredmorbius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low-voltage power lines have high transmission losses (though I'd have to look up just what that is). The reason for high-voltage lines is that it reduces the total current transmitted, which reduces transmission losses. Building out T&D infrastructure is expensive and a concern for distributed generation methods (solar, wind).

If I were to have free access to the flaring output, I'd implement this myself out of my own pocket.

You will need a deep pocket. I suspect the cash flow hole between turning a flare into feedstock for electricity generation or any other potentially productive use and getting paid for that product is wide and deep.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#58

Post by toomuchtodo »

Zigurd wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to have free access to the flaring output, I'd implement this myself out of my own pocket.

You will need a deep pocket. I suspect the cash flow hole between turning a flare into feedstock for electricity generation or any other potentially productive use and getting paid for that product is wide and deep.

Wouldn't have suggested it unless I had deep pockets.

Re: Drilling surprise opens door to volcano-powered electricity

#60

Post by csense »

Besides creating electricity, there are many potential industrial uses of magma:

"Magma serves as a heat source, replacing fuel in magma smelters, magma forges, magma glass furnaces, and magma kilns...Other uses for magma include obsidian farming, trap design, melting ice, igniting fires, and even garbage disposal." [1]

[1] http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Magma

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