steve@uunet.UU.NET (stephen Samuel) (03/01/91)
From: obed!steve@uunet.UU.NET (stephen Samuel) Has any work been done on the concept of using AFM minitions to fight oil fires via oxygen starvation? Could it be done with only one bomb or would something like a 3-bomb combo be necessary? How at risk would pilots be in trying to deliver these things? -- Stephen samuel !alberta!obed!steve steve@obed.biochem.ualberta.ca Don't be nice -- be compassionate. Compassion is what nice tries to emulate.
PAISLEY%auvm.auvm.edu@VM1.gatech.edu (03/06/91)
From: <PAISLEY%auvm.auvm.edu@VM1.gatech.edu> I saw an article in the NY Times about extinguishing oil fires, and I came up with the same question. I think the problem is that FAM's, while maybe putting the fire out, may not prevent a re-ignition of the fire, and would not work at all if the fire had spread to the reserve of the well itself. Plus is would be dangerous for the personnel hwo would have to be nearby to cap the wells. I certainly hope they can cap those wells soon, but this may not be the way to do it. --- L. GORDON PAISLEY, PAISLEY@AUVM.AUVM.EDU THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON, DC USA
gary@gatech.edu (Gary Coffman) (03/08/91)
From: ke4zv!gary@gatech.edu (Gary Coffman) In article <1991Mar1.052316.28686@cbnews.att.com> obed!steve@uunet.UU.NET (stephen Samuel) writes: > >Has any work been done on the concept of using AFM minitions to >fight oil fires via oxygen starvation? The problem with blowing out oil well fires is that the fire has heated up the metallic junk surrounding the wellhead to incandesance. The fire will immediately relight as soon as air whooshes back in following the snuffing explosion. You must first remove as much of the junk as possible and cool the rest with lots of water. Then you can blow out the candle. Gary
rog@zombie.dtc.hp.com (Roger Haaheim) (03/13/91)
From: rog@zombie.dtc.hp.com (Roger Haaheim) Just heard an interesting session on NPR. One of Red Adair's firefighters was on talking about the problems of putting out oil fires. He said putting out the fire is the easy part; takes about $200 worth of dynamite set off within a foot or to of a critical location in the gusher. The big problem is the quantity of oil they have to deal with between putting out the fire and capping off (shutting off) the flow of oil. He said the most dangerous thing about oil fires is working in the lake of oil that forms after the fire is out. He also said that once they get the fire out and look at the capping job, they sometimes have to reignite the fire while they make the equipment necessary to cap the well. If all the fires were put out immediately, it would still take them almost as long to get all the wells capped, and the resulting environmental damage from all the oil on the ground would be disastrous. Fascinating interview.
johnson@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Don Johnson) (03/13/91)
From: Don Johnson <johnson@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> In article <1991Mar6.035440.21656@cbnews.att.com> PAISLEY%auvm.auvm.edu@VM1.gatech.edu writes: > > >From: <PAISLEY%auvm.auvm.edu@VM1.gatech.edu> >I saw an article in the NY Times about extinguishing oil fires, and I came >up with the same question. I think the problem is that FAM's, while maybe >putting the fire out, may not prevent a re-ignition of the fire, and would >not work at all if the fire had spread to the reserve of the well itself. >Plus is would be dangerous for the personnel hwo would have to be nearby >to cap the wells. I beleive that the FAM would certainly "suck up" enough oxygen to snuff out an oil well fire, if it were able to function as designed. But I don't think it can. Think about it. A FAM is designed to burst at some X feet/meters above ground level, dispersing the mixture in a cloud. After some delay to allow for 'optimum' dispersal an ignition source goes off and detonates the cloud. Now imagine dropping this thing on an oil well fire that is burning at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. Will the fuel dissipate? Will an 'optimum' cloud be formed? I don't think so. My guess is the effect will be similar to pouring gasoline on a campfire.
scott@swindle.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Silvey) (03/13/91)
From: scott@swindle.Berkeley.EDU (Scott Silvey) ke4zv!gary@gatech.edu (Gary Coffman) writes: |> The problem with blowing out oil well fires is that the fire has heated |> up the metallic junk surrounding the wellhead to incandesance. The fire |> will immediately relight as soon as air whooshes back in following the |> snuffing explosion. You must first remove as much of the junk as possible |> and cool the rest with lots of water. Then you can blow out the candle. Also, I imagine it would be difficult preventing the FAE cloud from being prematurely ignited from the already existing hydrocarbon fire! Suppose you could have about 4 C130's drop several FAE`s at four equidistant points surrounding the fire, but that seems like too much trouble to me. /-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Scott Silvey | | | scott@xcf.berkeley.edu | "If u cn rd ths, thn icn sk bng iznw" | | | | | Flames to /dev/null | | \-----------------------------------------------------------------------------/
m1phm02@uunet.UU.NET (Patrick H. McAllister) (03/13/91)
From: fed!m1phm02@uunet.UU.NET (Patrick H. McAllister) I minute of thought will suffice to show that FAMs would be useless for extinguishing oil well fires. A FAM works by carefully distributing a flamable substance in the air and then, when it has reached the optimal distribution, igniting the mixture. As a side effect, most of the oxygen in the air is burned away, until normal air circulation replaces it, and the folks here seem to think that that effect would extinguish an existing fire at that location. Unfortunately, the effect of the existing fire would be to ignite the fuel from the bomb as quickly as it was release, preventing the bomb from achieving the near-instantaneous combustion that would be needed in order to deplete all the oxygen. Furthermore, these fires are BIG and must be generating an enormous convective flow of air in order to keep themselve fed in the first place, so the depleting-the-oxygen effect would be moot. All you would achieve is making the fire burn a little better for a minute. The point of using an explosive like dynamite to put out the fires is not that it uses up oxygen from the atmosphere -- the oxidizer is part of the dynamite, it would explode just as effectively in a vacuum -- but rather, that the shock wave and the combustion products from the explosion displace all the air for a brief while, leaving the fire with nothing to breathe. Pat
jtchew@csa2.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW) (03/14/91)
From: jtchew@csa2.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW) >The problem with blowing out oil well fires is that the fire has heated >up the metallic junk surrounding the wellhead to incandesance. The fire >will immediately relight as soon as air whooshes back in following the >snuffing explosion. You must first remove as much of the junk as possible >and cool the rest with lots of water. Then you can blow out the candle. And, if I'm not mistaken, the Arabian oilfields are different than most American ones. The oil is not pumped out; it comes out under the pressure of natural gas in the limestone formations. Flow rates, I believe, are on the order of 1000 gallons/minute. I don't know whether there is any possibility of destroying the wells underground effectively, i.e., stopping this fuel flow before it gets to the aforementioned hot metal. Given that there are three small companies in the well-fire control business that I know of, and that the Kuwaiti problem is two orders of magnitude worse than anything previously fought, one would imagine that plenty of ideas are being brainstormed, some involving military ordnance. To search for a small silver lining in that big black cloud, this is the best-ever "field lab" for innovative well control methods. --Joe "Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"