Advantages and Disadvantages of 'Alternative' Fuels
- Submitted by: zippyzaza
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- Date Submitted: 05/11/2013 06:54 AM
- Pages: 9
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The cost of fuel has tripled in the space of twenty years, and this isn’t just road fuel, it is home fuel as well. In fact, the average amount of money that is being paid out yearly by a household is around £1000. I will be taking the programmes examples of using bio gas and alcohol to power a moped or motorbike, as well as looking at oil extraction and fracking.
150km off the coast of Norway is an oil rig known as Draugen. Deep beneath the sea there are deposits of oil and gas. They would have been formed by remains of ancient fossilised organisms. The Draugen oil rig sits 2 km above a reservoir full of highly pressurised oil and gas and can produce up to 200 million tonnes of oil and gas every year.
The oil rig actually consists of 7 separate wells; as the gas and oil rise up to the platform under hydrostatic pressure, the oil and gas would be pumped back down through pipes into seven storage tanks. These storage tanks can reach 1 million barrels of oil and gas and therefore need to be emptied by tankers which have to visit the site every week to do so.
As many oil rigs will find, once the reservoir starts to empty, the pressure will become weak. Particularly at Draugen oil rig, a way of dealing with this is by injecting sea water via a platform at each end of the reservoir; this will maintain the pressure needed to extract the oil and gas. Although this solves the problem in the short term, in the long run, this will not be affective as there will be no oil and gas left to be extracted. This will mean that a new site will need to be identified, possibly further out to sea. This will implicate things as it will be deeper water, the pressure will have increased, and the temperature of the oil will increase as well.
Oil and gas are what is known as a finite resource. This is where we are using it far quicker than what is being made naturally. We are reliant on oil and gas as it is the main fuel source. Extracting the oil is a huge and expensive process...
150km off the coast of Norway is an oil rig known as Draugen. Deep beneath the sea there are deposits of oil and gas. They would have been formed by remains of ancient fossilised organisms. The Draugen oil rig sits 2 km above a reservoir full of highly pressurised oil and gas and can produce up to 200 million tonnes of oil and gas every year.
The oil rig actually consists of 7 separate wells; as the gas and oil rise up to the platform under hydrostatic pressure, the oil and gas would be pumped back down through pipes into seven storage tanks. These storage tanks can reach 1 million barrels of oil and gas and therefore need to be emptied by tankers which have to visit the site every week to do so.
As many oil rigs will find, once the reservoir starts to empty, the pressure will become weak. Particularly at Draugen oil rig, a way of dealing with this is by injecting sea water via a platform at each end of the reservoir; this will maintain the pressure needed to extract the oil and gas. Although this solves the problem in the short term, in the long run, this will not be affective as there will be no oil and gas left to be extracted. This will mean that a new site will need to be identified, possibly further out to sea. This will implicate things as it will be deeper water, the pressure will have increased, and the temperature of the oil will increase as well.
Oil and gas are what is known as a finite resource. This is where we are using it far quicker than what is being made naturally. We are reliant on oil and gas as it is the main fuel source. Extracting the oil is a huge and expensive process...