People are missing a couple of details in this: the Canadian "oil" in question is not a liquid from a well to start with, it's tar sands that have been dug up. The first step of processing is melting it to filter out the sand. This leaves you with viscous bitumen that cannot be pumped efficiently down a pipeline. So normally it's processed again to make "dilbit", diluted bitumen, in order to ship it to an oil refinery for cracking to produce actually useful petrol.
Dilbit is diluted with chemicals that need to be imported from the US or Middle East. These liquids also need to be transported and can result in their own spills. This looks like an important development.
As a rule, it is far easier* to transport/handle liquids in large quantity than solids. Even ignoring the effort to convert/deconvert the oil at each end, I'm not seeing this as a step forward that will improve the bulk of crude-oil transport -- baring a more detailed analysis than what reads to me as 'pipelines bad.'
*Cheaper, safer, more efficient, requiring less maintenance, etc...
> As a rule, it is far easier to transport/handle liquids in large quantity than solids.*
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.
The raw material isn't a liquid that can be pumped. This approach is converting the raw material into pellets instead of diluting it into a liquid, which is the current approach.
This is weird. Pipelines are the cheapest, most efficient, and safest way to move large amounts of oil. How is something which renders oil impossible to transport via pipeline a step forward?
Well the obvious is you need a pipeline, to transport via pipeline - and that can take decades to put in place, and sometime is politically challenging as we've seen with Keystone XL. There are already railways that go everywhere.
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:
What they mine out of tar sands/shales is bitumen. You can't pump asphalt, so they actually have to add a solvent to make it pumpable, usually naptha, which they then have to ship to the head end - meaning you end up with 2 pipelines. This idea makes the petroleum product more like coal, which has an extensive and cost-effective rail infrastructure for transport.
The article mentions that it's more environmentally friendly. The balls float on water and apparently can't be poaked easily. That's a plus in my book.
Because it uses existing infrastructure rather than requiring the construction of pipelines.
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.
One problem with pipelines is that once you've sunk billions of dollars into building them, you have an enormous vested interest in continuing to use them.
Why would I run a pipeline on my land to provide you with customers while I don't get paid ? If something breaks (which occurs every year) I have no recourse and my land is in bad shape.
Nice, although I'm wondering which company will trade efficiency (using spheres to transport a liquid means you have lots of "wasted" space) for environmental safety... without a law imposing it, at least.
Maybe the economic incentive of balls just "rolling away" (thus remaining recoverable) in the event of a pipeline/tanker/carriage leak could balance this?
They are not only trading it for environmental saftey. As mentioned in another comment, using these balls you don't have to rely on specialized rail waggons anymore. So, while you may lose some space due to inefficient packing, you could easily make that up by using lots more of (assumedly) cheaper general-purpose/coal waggons.
Canadian tar sands should not be turned into oil at all -- there's no clean way to do so and the whole endeavor is based on continued government subsidies for it to be cost effective. Canada has a rep for being progressive and environmentally friendly but this is anything but.
- 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 article mentions using rail cars to transport the bitumen balls -- but given the nature of the material, would they not stick together into clumps / semi-solid layers at the bottoms of rail cars? Coal is solid / brittle, almost slippery. These things seem to be the opposite.
so, you make pellets. Then you have to mix them with some "light" oil produced during the production of pellets.
So you still have to transport them together.
I cannot really understand how this is better than carrying oil directly.
They mention using the byproduct oil to reconstitute the pellets, but that oil could come from another source. I would picture a system where the pellets are shipped from alberta to houston etc., and the light oil produced by the process is used as fuel within alberta or transported to local refineries by smaller pipeline or train/truck. The balls would be reconstituted using oil available at the houston refinery, or using oil produced at that refinery in the oil upgrading process.
Could the oil not be put in containers and transported by rail in its original form anyway? I'm not sure if converting to pellets really makes the problem easier to solve...
This misreable trade is all that stands between many people and poverty. Green energy alternatives have years to decades before completely making hydrocaebons irrelevant. Electric cars certainly a big step, but only in beginning stages of market penetration.
You're right, we also need to ban, cars, milk, beef, beer, clothes, plastics, .. oh crap we've now banned everything that underpins our modern technological age.
Does anyone see the irony in this? "We admit this is utterly dangerous for the environment so instead of sending it out in liquid form we're now going to send it out in small pellets so they can then be transformed and it can pollute the world exactly where we want it to pollute."
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dade_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thereisnospork|8 years ago|reply
*Cheaper, safer, more efficient, requiring less maintenance, etc...
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sharpercoder|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrkel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cperciva|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|8 years ago|reply
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-...
[+] [-] yborg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joe-Z|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eltoozero|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vkou|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simlevesque|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gattilorenz|8 years ago|reply
Maybe the economic incentive of balls just "rolling away" (thus remaining recoverable) in the event of a pipeline/tanker/carriage leak could balance this?
[+] [-] Joe-Z|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiku|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport
[+] [-] micah_chatt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radicaldreamer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
- 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?
[+] [-] userbinator|8 years ago|reply
As much as coal, if not more.
[+] [-] btbuildem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riffraff|8 years ago|reply
I cannot really understand how this is better than carrying oil directly.
[+] [-] deltawave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btbuildem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osrec|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbcooper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SippinLean|8 years ago|reply
Oh, interesting title...
>I don't think it will replace pipelines
Ah, nevermind.
[+] [-] Boothroid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andriesm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiku|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petraeus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codecamper|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] xutopia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shawnz|8 years ago|reply