The following activity is designed to prompt expression of your knowledge of, and ability to apply, engineering professional skills. Its purpose is to determine how well your engineering program has taught you these skills. By participating, you are giving your consent to have your posts used for academic research purposes. When your posts are evaluated by the program assessment committee, your names will be removed.
To post a comment: 1) click on the Sign In button in the upper right hand corner of the blog page, then sign in using your gmail account and password (If you don’t have a gmail account, sign up for one – it only takes a couple minutes); 2) scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the word “comments,” which appears right below the list of sources.
Tuesday Week 1 Initial Posts: All participants post initial responses to these instructions (see below) and the scenario. Time line: You will have 2 weeks to complete the on-line discussion as a team. Use this blog to capture your thoughts, perspectives, ideas, and revisions as you work together on this problem. This activity is discussion-based, meaning you will participate through a collaborative exchange and critique of each other’s ideas and work. The goal is to challenge and support one another as a team to tap your collective resources and experiences to dig more deeply into the issue(s) raised in the scenario. Ideally everyone in the discussion will refine his/her ideas through the discussion that develops, so you should respond well before the activity ends so that the discussion has time to mature. It is important to make your initial posts and subsequent responses in a timely manner. You are expected to make multiple posts during each stage of this on-going discussion. The timeline below suggests how to pace your discussion. This is just a suggestion. Feel free to pace the discussion as you see fit.
Thursday Week 1 Response Posts: Participants respond by tying together information and perspectives on important points and possible approaches. Participants identify gaps in information and seek to fill those gaps.
Tuesday Week 2 Refine Posts: Participants work toward agreement on what is most important, determine what they still need to find out, and evaluate one or more approaches from the previous week’s discussion.
Thursday Week 2 Polish Final Posts: Participants come to an agreement on what is most important, and propose one or more approaches to address the problem(s).
Discussion Instructions
Discussion Instructions
Imagine that you are a team of engineers working together for a company or organization to address the problem(s) raised in the scenario. Discuss what your team would need to take into consideration to begin to address the problem(s). You do not need to suggest specific technical solutions, but identify the most important factors and suggest one or more viable approaches.
Suggestions for discussion topics
· Identify the primary and secondary problems raised in the scenario.
· Who are the major stakeholders and what are their perspectives?
· What outside resources (people, literature/references, and technologies) could be engaged in developing viable approaches?
· Identify related contemporary issues.
· Brainstorm a number of feasible approaches to address the issue.
· Consider the following contexts: economic, environmental, cultural/societal, and global. What impacts would the approaches you brainstormed have on these contexts?
· Come to agreement on one or more viable approaches and state the rationale.
BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Clean Up Controversies
April 2011 marks the one year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest unintended discharge of oil into marine waters in history. The 86-day gusher sent nearly 200 million gallons of oil, tens of millions of gallons of natural gas and 1.8 million gallons of poorly studied chemical dispersants into the northern Gulf of Mexico. The breadth and depth of the oil’s impacts on the Gulf of Mexico’s complex ecosystem continues to be intensely debated.
According to the government’s “oil budget,” released by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in November, a quarter of the oil evaporated or dissolved into the water. Another 13 percent was blown into fine droplets as it rushed from the broken riser pipe, the report says. Much of this dispersed oil mixed with natural gas from the well and remained deep in the gulf as a thin plume that drifted for months.The chemical dispersant Corexit 9500 sprayed at the wellhead dispersed another 16 percent into fine droplets, which joined the plume, the report says. Natural oil-munching bacteria then swarmed the plumes, according to research published in the journal Science in August by Terry Hazen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Three weeks after the well was capped in July, Hazen and his crew no longer found signs of deep oil or gas as they crisscrossed the gulf.
In addition to the quarter of the oil that NOAA says nature erased, the Unified Command, led by the U.S. Coast Guard, dispensed with a third of it. Some 17 percent of the total got sucked into the “top hat” lowered onto the broken riser pipe or was otherwise directly recovered, loaded onto tankers and moved to refineries. Flaring at the surface burned another 5 percent. Only 3 percent of the oil was skimmed.
Much of the criticism focused on the dispersant’s effectiveness, along with whether it damaged, or will damage, wildlife.
“The dispersants got stuck in deep water layers around 3,000 feet [915 meters] and below,” said study leader David Valentine, a microbial geochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara…. “We were seeing it three months after the well had been capped. We found that all of that dispersant added at depth stayed in the deepwater plumes. Not only did it stay, but it didn’t get rapidly biodegraded as many people had predicted.”
In total, the response team pumped over 800,000 gallons of dispersants into the oil flow; dispersants break down oil into smaller droplets that can degrade more quickly. But the impact of the dispersants themselves has been up for debate. For the new study, scientists tracked the dispersants by following one of its ingredients: dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (DOSS).
Some 640,000 pounds (290,000 kilograms) of DOSS was injected between April and July, a huge number made all the more daunting because the chemical comprises only ten percent of the total dispersant volume, according to the study, published online January 26 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
The dispersants had degraded very little by September, and were still found at ocean depths of around 3,000 feet below. But researchers aren’t sure what to make of this realization that the dispersants lingered longer than expected:
On the one hand, it is positive that the dispersants remained in deep waters and didn’t float up through the water column, where they would have mingled with surface layers, says Elizabeth Kujawinski, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who led the study. “But the bad news is that it stayed there. It didn’t really go away as quickly as maybe they had thought it would.”
As for the impact on deep sea marine animals, already battered by the spill, researchers just don’t know what the future holds. Says environmental toxicologist Ronald Kendal:
“These organisms have developed capabilities to live under high pressures, with low oxygen levels, and with no sunlight. It’s a more rigorous and perhaps less changing environment, and all of a sudden a wave of chemical dispersants comes by. What does that mean for the environment? I don’t know. I really don’t. But it concerns me significantly.”
Sources
Primary Problem Statement:
ReplyDelete- Dispersants effects on the environment: Should it be removed? If so, how?
Secondary:
- Additional Oil Spill Clean Up
Stakeholders:
- BP (They want to find a solution to the problem)
- Government Agencies - NOAA, U.S, Mexico (They want to remove it as it looks bad to the public eye)
- Scientists - Geologists, Environmentalists, Microbiologists, and Chemists (They probably want to remove it as they are unsure of the effects it has on the environment)
Outside Sources:
- BP Employees/Engineers who work directly with the dispersant
- Microbiologists, Chemists, Environmental Engineers as they can provide insight into providing viable solutions to the problem
- More information about the dispersant itself, like chemical characteristics, MSDS information, and its effects on organic material
Related Issues:
- Nuclear Waste leaking into soil and/or bodies of water (i.e; Hanford)
- Chemical Spills from chemical plants
Feasible Approaches & Analysis:
1) Take samples of dispersant and conduct studies on its effects on organic materials and/or microbial environments.
- This could provide insight to how the dispersant will affect the current environment in which it's in. Examining the effects on organic materials and/or microbial environments will allow for more educated opinions on how to come up with a viable solution.
- Although this method could be great at shedding light on the scenario to better understand how to solve the problem, this process could be lengthy and expensive and may not be worth the time of the stakeholders.
2) If the dispersant must be removed, then utilize physical, chemical, and/or microbial methods for removal.
a) Physical removal could be achieved with a vacuum.
- This could also have adverse effects of further disrupting the dispersant and cause it to expand its volume within the environment.
- This may not be the best solution.
b) Chemically dissolve the dispersant to a neutral state that is environmentally "friendly."
- This solution could be seen as more of a problem to the public eye, as the public may just hear "more chemicals are being dumped into the environment" and the solution may not have public support.
c) Find microbes and/or enzymes to digest the dispersant.
- As shown with the oil clean up, this may not be able to provide 100% removal, and therefore may not be a publicly supported solution.
3) If it does not need to be removed, and just needs to be contained without disrupting the environment, the following solutions could be utilized:
a) Zone off the area so the public may not gain access to the area.
- This could prevent further disruption of the dispersant seen from public ignorance.
- This could also cause panic amongst the public as they see a zoned off area as being dangerous and requiring removal for personal safety.
b) Monitor the area bi-monthly to ensure the dispersant is not increasing in volume.
- This could be expensive in hiring individuals who are trained to run environmental tests that meet government regulations to ensure containment.
- Also, if it's determined that the dispersant has been disrupted to the point of requiring removal, then additional systems will have to be put in place for the removal process.
c) Immobilize the dispersant by solidifying it to contain it and isolating it from the environment.
- This may be difficult to do, and could also have adverse affects in further disrupting the dispersant, but this method is often utilized when dealing with radioactive waste and could be a viable solution.
- This solution has the potential to be economically sound if the binding material is relatively cheap, but the environmental factor needs to be taken into account when selecting the binder.
- This solution could be approved by the public as it is a way to isolate the dispersant from the environment without so much harming the environment - and the solution has the benefit of being conducted out of sight and out of mind to the public eye.
The primary problem as I see it is that the remaining pollutants need to be removed or disposed of, and their effects on the environment can be studied as a secondary goal.
ReplyDeleteThe major stakeholder involved would be BP, as it is their mess and they are interested in both cleaning the spill and improving public image. Also involved are various government agencies as mentioned previously. The scientists mentioned in the last comment could be specified to agencies like NOAA, which would be interested in the effects of the various dispersants which are not well studied on the environment.
For outside sources I would consider utilizing the numerous volunteer groups focused on environmental well being, as they could be an invaluable source of manpower for the general cleaning operations. This would also help towards improving BP's image if they were shown to be working in hand with these organizations. I would also recommend using national laboratories to study the dispersant's chemical and physical properties.
Related issues: Any of the numerous oil spills such as Valdez for ideas on cleanup. Also the recovery methods for the dispersants used already by oil companies could be reviewed to see if there is a process that can be applied to this situation
For a feasible approach I would suggest that the extent of the contamination is determined first. The spill was venting for a very long time and the size of the expanse of pollutants does not seem well known. Knowing this would give a clear direction on where and how to start, especially if the majority is hard to access as it could change the way we go about cleanup.
Following that the properties of the dispersants should be investigated, at least so far as to determine the best means of their removal from the environment. Further research can be done but that would be at the discretion of the stakeholders.
Based on these findings a more detailed cleaning operation can be devised. I would not think that leaving the pollutants is acceptable as it would further damage BP's public image. The cost has already been partially covered by government agencies already for current cleanup efforts, so costs could potentially be reduced through seeking outside assistance.
I also feel that it is a poor idea to keep the cleanup "out of sight and out of mind to the public eye." BP has been hit very hard as far as public relations go already, and so I think that an effort should be made in this process to improve that image.