Bitumen balls could be a pipeline-free way to transport Alberta oil
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
*Cheaper, safer, more efficient, requiring less maintenance, etc...
Is it?
For liquids, at all times you need a sealed container that doesn't leak. For solids, it's enough for the holes to be no larger than the individual solid object. This makes containers cheaper and requiring much less maintenance.
As for this specific case, the article makes at least two points:
- transporting solids can reuse existing infrastructure (rail + coal wagons), giving you flexibility - as opposed to requiring you to ship from only where the pipeline ends (or to build new pipelines);
- with "one weird trick" (injecting some extra gas into the bubble) they can make each pellet buoyant, and it seems they also don't dissolve easily - the result is something that's potentially much easier to collect if you happened to spill it into an ocean.
damn that would definitely help on spill cleanings!
It's a pretty simple question to answer if you know all of the parameters of the environment.
Plus I don't see why pipelines wouldn't work; assuming you could just carry the balls along with water and use a diverter of some sort to separate the balls from water at the pumping stages.
However, it is a reality that this industry exists, so sure it might be better to not extract tar sands at all, but as long as it's happening anyway why not make it as clen as possible?
Many of which ship direct to the United States. One is even produced IN the United States (Bakersfield, CA).
On a wells-to-wheels basis, Canadian oil sands are only 6-8% more carbon-intensive than typical light crude (e.g. Saudi), and it comes from a politically-friendly country that supports female rights, human rights in general, and is not bombing their neighbours.
What you say regarding disruption of large areas of wilderness is true when it comes to tailings ponds, but you should also be aware that the vast majority of recent development (and probably most go-forward) is via in-situ extraction that does not require those tailings ponds.
Source: I am a chemical engineer and work directly in this industry.
'Strip-mining the boreal to extract the tar sands and processing the oil makes the sands much more damaging to the climate than conventional oil.
“I believe the carbon intensity of extraction and processing for the oil sands is about double that of conventional oil,” Homer-Dixon said.'
http://grist.org/article/this-could-be-the-end-of-canadian-t...
I guess this is an inconvenient truth based on the downvoting.
By all means, advocate for wide-scale reduction and elimination of the use of petroleum products. Demand that your representatives fight for carbon-neutral energy production. But pretending that boycotting Canadian products and instead consuming more coal, fracked shale oil and tanker-shipped crude from corrupt autocratic regimes is somehow an important part of solving the problem just makes you look like you're not paying attention. As does supporting corrupt officials and corporate misbehavior in places like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela over supporting an allied liberal democracy with a strong (at least in comparison) record of environmental stewardship and oversight on corporate activity.
I bet that if I asked people (native or otherwise) about local fracking operations, coal mines, tailing ponds, power plants, refineries, offload and storage facilities, etc, etc, in any country I will find a bunch who would really rather they were somewhere else. I'm not sure why that's important to the discussion.
As for the reported "straw man", you seem to be under the impression that I argued that tar sands were wonderful and that Canadians truly enjoy living near them. Which is, of course, a straw man. I made three points: (1) The assertion that Alberta bitumen mining has twice the C02 impact of other sources of petroleum is provably false and (2) If you do not change the demand for petroleum products and do not want to source them in Canada, you have to source them somewhere else. (3) Other sources aren't necessarily much more palatable, especially if you include factors like support of the economy of the country of origin and the source producer.
Where's the straw man?
I never said any of what you refute above. Also you set up a false dichotomy by implying that we either choose to use tar sands or are forced to support corrupt regimes - there are of course other alternatives scenarios - I note you avoid mention of LNG.
Bottom line though: tar sands are generally accepted by those that do not have a stake of some kind as being environmentally disastrous, far worse than the alternatives, but I'm guessing that's not in your corporate refutation manual.
(2) I did mention LNG. I just spelled it 'fracking'. Currently, two thirds of US-produced natural gas is retrieved by hydraulic formation fracturing, and that fraction has been steadily growing.
(3) Arguing that "tar sands are generally accepted by those that do not have a stake of some kind..." is inaccurate and sloppy goal-post moving. I'm also not claiming that petroleum production isn't a serious and global environmental problem, I'm arguing that a belief that Canadian bitumen is the heart of the problem is dangerously misinformed. I'd much rather we shut it down and invested heavily in molten salt reactors, but until that happens the problem isn't tar sands: it's global demand and dependence on burning petroleum.
(4) I don't even know why I'm writing this---when you implied I'm a corporate shill and claimed that the only people who disagree with you are those who have a stake of some kind in tar sands, you conceded the argument. Have a good day.
Also I'm prepared to put up with some despotic regimes if it means we don't boil the oceans.
Next - right now, you need special tanker cards to transport oil via rail - and latency on those can be on the order of years if you want to scale up.
What's neat about this invention, is that it can transport oil in a form that, if I read correctly, isn't as catastrophic when spilled as an oil tanker would be, and, also importantly, can use rail cars that were designed for something else (the author cites Coal) - so no need to wait a few years (and spend $$$) for special tanker cars - there are a zillion idle coal cars right now.
This article captures part of the significant economic incentive as well:
http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/demand-...
Maybe the economic incentive of balls just "rolling away" (thus remaining recoverable) in the event of a pipeline/tanker/carriage leak could balance this?
And more this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEekXRNztVI
?
- How solid are those pebbles? I assume they're not like soft blobs that can easily split and merge together? But then how much abuse they can take? E.g. if they crack easily, you can't really stack them together very high.
- The obvious one - are the pebbles flammable?
As much as coal, if not more.
I cannot really understand how this is better than carrying oil directly.
Oh, interesting title...
>I don't think it will replace pipelines
Ah, nevermind.
(The other current method of transporting bitumen is to dilute it with naptha, which has to be sent back to the extraction site in order to be used with the next lot of bitumen)
Crackers (in oil refineries) take as input a heavier fraction and then break apart and sort the molecules by length giving various different outputs which can then be used in different applications.
Nah, that's exaggeration. Tar sands are extremely polluting and the 'many people' are those that are employed in an industry that didn't even exist a decade ago, it's mostly boom towns specifically constructed around getting this oil out of the ground.
I find it quite interesting that we would impose environmental constraints on the third world - where people really need to fight to make ends meet - and yet allow something as bad as this because 'many people might land in poverty', when in fact they have alternatives, just not as lucrative.