This MRI RAPID research will assemble a laboratory-scale oil/gas well blowout simulator instrument, which will be used to address critical issues related to oil/gas dispersion in water and gas hydrate formation as those encountered in an oil/gas blowout in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) oil spill.
Due to the quick recovery response necessary for the GoM oil spill, the PIs seek to build a simulation apparatus to study the gas hydrate formation in the containment of the oil leak, which has been a constant source of concern due to their rapid formation and plugging of remediation equipment. The Deepwater Oil/Gas Well Blowout (DOGWB) will be assembled (designed, fabricated, and commissioned) as quickly as possible in the timeframe of 6 months. This new instrument will be combined with particle force and aggregation measurement tools developed in the laboratory of the PIs over the last two decades, to model and provide mitigation of hydrate plugs from blowouts. Once assembled, the DOGWB instrument will allow the PIs to: (a) determine oil/gas dispersion/droplet evolution as a function of temperature, pressure, flow velocity, dispersant/surfactant concentration, and mechanical mixing, and (b) mitigate gas hydrate formation during containment of the GoM oil spill. This research is potentially transformative in improving the understanding of deep-water oil/gas well blowouts to help develop response efforts and enhance containment efforts. This research provides a new approach and combines a 30-year old successful instrument design used at the University of Calgary (since dismantled and discarded), with several substantial modifications incorporating the advanced knowledgebase at Colorado School of Mines (CSM). This improved instrument will enable the study of oil and gas bubbles in water at hydrate formation conditions simulating the recent GoM deepwater oil well blowout.
This RAPID will complement another recently funded CSM RAPID (CBET-1042732) that was awarded in hydrate research.
The instrument will provide unique experimental capabilities to study oil/gas plumes flowing through a water column at field conditions. This will enable new experimentally-based science and engineering on the development of oil/gas dispersion and hydrate mitigation in general deep-water oil/gas well blowouts occurring in different regions/fields under a range of temperature, pressure (deepwater depths), flow rates, and fluid compositions. This information can lead to the generation of new guidelines for mitigating the environmental impacts of deepwater oil/gas well blowouts, and containing oil spills by minimizing the adverse effects of hydrate formation and blockage of the containment system and associated structures. Moreover, the results obtained on oil/water droplet breakup/agglomeration will also further the understanding in emulsion/dispersion science.
This information is timely and critical in light of the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Gas hydrates are solid crystals consisting of hydrogen-bonded water cages that can trap small guest molecules (e.g. methane, propane). The deepwater Macondo oil well blowout incident highlighted the need to study gas hydrates and their role in containing an oil spill. At the cold temperatures and high pressures of the waters around the leaking Macondo well (and similar deepwater wells) gas hydrates are thermodynamically stable and can form in the open ocean or in containment equipment deployed to capture leaking gas and oil. Due to the difficulties of studying gas hydrates at such deepwater conditions, the Colorado School of Mines developed and constructed a new high pressure Deepwater Oil/Gas Well Blowout (DOGWB) simulation apparatus. The system has been constructed to enable experiments to be performed at conditions found in the Gulf of Mexico in a laboratory environment (around 4 °C and 200 bar). The DOGWB system operates by utilizing water flowing counter current to rising bubble(s), thereby suspending gas bubbles in the viewport of the instrument to study hydrate formation. This instrument allows us to: (a) determine oil/gas dispersion/droplet evolution as a function of temperature, pressure, flow velocity, dispersant/surfactant concentration, and mechanical mixing, and (b) investigate the mitigation of gas hydrate formation during containment of an oil/gas blowout in a deepwater operation. Data collected on the DOGWB instrument can lead to generation of new guidelines to mitigate environmental impacts of deepwater oil/gas well blowouts and contain oil spills by minimizing the adverse effects of hydrate formation and blockage of the containment system and associated structures. The application of the DOGWB instrument will ultimately facilitate a better understanding of the basic science of hydrate formation, growth, and dissolution with specific focus on open ocean hydrate formation, i.e., in the absence of surface effects typically found in pipelines or laboratory experiments.
