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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (10704)	5/31/2010 4:40:50 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24235

Re: ground source heat pumps, costs, savings Check out the new New Hampshire Institute of Art building in Manchester, 7 stories tall, includes student dorms. Source for heat pumps is 2 wells, deeper is 1800 ft deep. Of course they have a boiler too. The building opened last fall, and the boiler was NOT fired for the entire winter. quotes: some green energy goals for the building were a high-performance envelope (including blue jean insulation) including maximizing daylighting and managing solar heat gain; minimizing fossil fuel use with two geothermal wells with heat pumps for heating and cooling, plus photovoltaic panels on the sunshades; and conserving water and reducing runoff by using roof rainwater collection for toilet flushing. hippopress.com The Right Design It started with desire. “The Institute was committed to doing the right thing, They wanted to reduce their carbon footprint, and as a non-profit, reduce their operating costs over time.” . . . “From the get-go, energy efficiency was central to the design,” . . the estimated energy savings for the project are 56,255 kWh annually, with an associated annual savings of $8,440. State of the Art As most homeowners now know, energy efficiency starts with an energy envelope. Constructing the new building’s envelope was “a pretty intensive process,” according to NHIA President Roger Williams, but one can now literally feel the difference. “Normally when it's cold out, and you feel the interior wall, it’s cold,” said Williams. “That's because the dew point is at the interior wall. The way these walls are constructed, the dew point is on the outside. It's using less energy, because it's able to hold the set temperature longer.” Lighting was also an important consideration for the Institute, which sought energy-efficient options that would not compromise the lighting quality needed for artistic creation and exhibition. “The improvements in lighting fixtures are incredible,” said Williams, noting that, as an art college, NHIA uses a lot of track lighting and chose special LED bulbs to showcase students’ artwork. “Their color correction is pretty close to daylight,” he said. Power from Above, and Below While the building’s roof was designed to reflect sunlight (mitigating the “heat island effect” that plagues urban buildings), each row of its window awnings incorporates solar panels that collectively are capable of generating up to 14.2 kilowatts of renewable power. Williams estimates the payback for the renewable generation to be about seven years. “The energy created by our solar photovoltaic system runs the other energy efficiency features in the building.” In addition to solar power, the building has two 1,500 foot geothermal wells. The system takes advantage of the relatively stable ground or water temperatures near the earth’s surface (roughly 50 – 55 degrees F year-round) to heat or cool buildings above-ground. Instead of creating heat, geothermal pumps “move” heat in the desired direction. “From what I understand, ours is the first urban application of geothermal technology in New Hampshire,” said Williams. “We were pretty lucky in that the lot is just large enough to accommodate the two geothermal wells.” Finally, using a vegetative roof and 4,500-gallon water tank, the building employs a sophisticated rainwater collection system to flush toilets. In addition to conserving water, the system conserves the energy that would be needed to pump and deliver the water to the building. psnhenergybrief.com. The geothermal ground source system was built by Skillings & Sons skillingsgeothermal.com Construction video here (fun to watch): nhia.edu mauisurfer on May 31, 2010 - 2:00pm

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (10704)	6/1/2010 12:57:06 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24235

Winter -- I’ll use your question to give a brief summary, with the permission of the editors, for the benefit of the newbies who seem to be showing up hourly. Above all else this tales goes with a very BIG IF: if we have a accurate picture of how the incident began then here goes: they had run production casing from total depth back up to the well head/BOP. Cement was pumped down the drill pipe to the bottom of this casing and forced back up between the csg and the rock. The reason for this cmt job is to isolate the oil reservoir. This cement seal would be the only barrier preventing the well from “coming in “ (flowing oil/NG up the csg). Prior to pumping the cmt the weight of the drilling mud kept the reservoir from flowing up. The backpressure stopping the flow was a result of an 18,000’ column of heavy drilling mud. Before temporarily abandoning the well BP was required for safety reasons to set a series of cement plugs in the production csg to ensure the reservoir would not leak to the surface until they were ready to produce the well. To make the eventual re-entry of the well easier BP “displaced” the riser (that 20” tube that connected the well head/BOP to the drilling rig on the surface of the GOM) with seawater and thus removing the heavy drill mud from the well. But they did this before setting the top cmt plug which would have kept any oil/NG from flowing up should the csg cmt fail. This is why testing the validity of the cmt job was extremely critical: the column of seawater could not produce a sufficient backpressure to prevent the oil/NG from rushing to the surface. If the cmt didn’t hold there was a 100% certainty of the well flowing oil/NG. There has been much discussion about the interpretation of the tests conducted on the cmt, the nature of the cmt, who has ultimate responsibility for certifying the cmt job. Likewise the reason for waiting to set the top cmt plug until after displacement has been speculated by others. I’ll leave those debates to others. But a good cmt job wasn’t the last safeguard. There is a standard procedure for determining if a well is flowing. The same protocol for a cased hole as when drilling. I don’t know for a fact but I wouldn’t be surprised if this procedure had been done more than 100 times as this well was being drilled. The mud pumps on the rig push drilling mud down the drill pipe, which then returns to the surface between the drill pipe and the csg or open hole. Though this will sound simplistic this is the primary method to tell if a well is kicking (flowing): you shut the mud pumps off. For oil/NG to flow to the surface it has to push the mud out of the hole ahead of it. If you turn the pumps off and the mud stops flowing out you have a static well. If the mud continues flowing out the return line the well is coming in and a blow out is on the way unless you stop this flow. In addition to visually seeing the mud flowing out, there are various mud tanks that have the mud flow volume measured automatically. Again, IF we have the correct story, the mud returns were not being monitored. I’ll leave the details of why they weren’t monitoring the mud returns to others. Why the cmt failed is a separate issue from not monitoring the mud returns. Had they seen the mud flowing they could have shut the well in (closed all the return valves on the rig). The oil/NG might have still flowed all the way up but it would have not escaped to the drill floor and exploded. Killing a shut in well is a standard procedure and practiced often. Once the well was shut in they could have replaced the light seawater with heavy drilling mud via the drill pipe and stopped the flow of oil/NG from the reservoir. But they did not become aware of the well coming in until it as too late. The failure of the BOP to stop the blow out is a completely separate issue I’ll let others expand upon. Likewise with the various efforts to stop the blow out and collect the oil spill. As usual the rest of the TODers are free to add, modify and adjust this summary. My hope was to reduce some of the redundency required to bring our new memebers up to speed ROCKMAN on May 31, 2010 - 8:11pm