Thoughts on the oil spill and energy sources

This post describes the essence of the session that I had with students in the summer engineering program at Notre Dame.  The primary threads are how engineers might think of the issue of energy and how the oil spill intersects with the larger societal challenges.

I started by showing a live video link of the oil well with the gas and oil gushing out.  You can find these on the BP web page (http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7062605); different camera views come and go.  The view that we looked at was intended to show the dispersant being added to the well effluent.  I noted that it was not clear if the actions to date had increased or decreased the amount of oil and gas that are entering the ocean, but that it is certainly possible that by cutting off the riser, more total flow is occurring up the well.  The current collection values of approximately 25,000 bbl/day could be less than 1/3 of what the well is capable of producing.

The rest of the session is available as a pdf at:http://web.me.com/mjm7357/.  

This is a quick snapshot into this problem and just examines some barriers to renewable fuels -- in an attempt to explain why the current mix leans so heavily on fossil fuels.  Although not written in the slides, I did state that the challenge for the future is to lower solar to levels matching coal and gas, not to raise everything to match solar.