BP Whiting Refinery Shutdown Evacuates Employees

[yeahbaby]

Power outage at BP oil refinery in Indiana prompts evacuation, temporary shutdown

Authorities say BP's sprawling oil refinery in northwest Indiana was hit by a power outage that prompted the company to shut it down and evacuate workers.

www.newsday.com

Drove by there this morning taking my brother to the University of Chicago hospital. Glad we missed that mess.

 

[d.kaufman]

Here's some pics I posted in the NWI thread

 

[Twangbanger]

Aaaand Indiana is back to $4.50 a gallon...

 

[d.kaufman]

And we here in Lake and Porter county we have to do emissions testing on our vehicles. Such a joke. This latest BP episode is emitting more emissions than every vehicle in the area for a year I'd be willing to bet.

Had another incident a week or so ago. Leak and spill of something like 55k gallons of some sort of fuel

Last June another burn off with thousands of 911 calls for the smell and nausea.

Fined 40 million a year ago for all the emissions releases

 

[d.kaufman]

BP to pay $40M settlement for pollution at Indiana refinery

Whiting, Ind. – A big penalty for a major player in the multinational oil and gas industry. A subsidiary of BP is set to pay a record-setting $40 million for charges that its Indiana refinery in Wh…

fox59.com

 

[d.kaufman]

BP Whiting oil refinery leak causes natural gas smell across south suburbs

Some south suburban residents reported a natural gas smell Wednesday, resulting from a leak at a northwest Indiana oil refinery last week, BP said.

abc7chicago.com

 

[d.kaufman]

BP being eyed for potential violation in Sunday's gas release that fouled Region air

"IDEM will subsequently review reports and take appropriate action in the case of any violations," an agency spokesman said.

www.nwitimes.com

 

[Leadeye]

It's a tough and dangerous business, heating things that burn under pressure on a continuous basis to get them to turn into what you want.

 

[91FXRS]

And we here in Lake and Porter county we have to do emissions testing on our vehicles. Such a joke. This latest BP episode is emitting more emissions than every vehicle in the area for a year I'd be willing to bet.

Had another incident a week or so ago. Leak and spill of something like 55k gallons of some sort of fuel

Last June another burn off with thousands of 911 calls for the smell and nausea.

Fined 40 million a year ago for all the emissions releases

I remember that because I thought I was losing my mind, kept smelling what I thought was gear lube outside, was under trucks checking for leaks....lol. Heard the story next day it was the BP incident. Sometime in the past week I swear I smelled it again just not as strong, actually said to myself "BP is at it again I guess". God knows what we are breathing but it will be ok as long as we do are part and get our emission tests....

 

[mmpsteve]

...

Last June another burn off with thousands of 911 calls for the smell and nausea.

Combined with the Canada smoke haze, it was quite ... yucky.

.

 

[Butch627]

Heading into NWI on the Skyway as I approached the BIG bridge there was already a thin fog but the sky became completely black. Stayed that way almost all the way to I65.

 

[BiscuitsandGravy]

Really need to get that EV mandate sooner...

 

[Shadow01]

Did the fire at the tire recycling yard ever go out?

 

[indyblue]

I’ve always wondered why they don’t utilize the gases or energy emitted by those flares to do something useful like power the plant. It seems like they could pump those gases through some kind of turbin engine to produce power

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I’ve always wondered why they don’t utilize the gases or energy emitted by those flares to do something useful like power the plant. It seems like they could pump those gases through some kind of turbin engine to produce power

Some college kid down in Texas rigged up a power plant that mines bitcoin on those stacks, so it's possible to get some useful energy out of them for sure. Understand I'm just parroting what I read, but the reason it's not routinely used for power is it's a flare up/flare down situation and not a steady source. Bitcoin mining obviously doesn't care if it's powered at 100% for an hour then 30% for an hour as nothing critical rests on it. As far as capturing it to use in the natural gas market, it doesn't make sense economically because the cost of the infrastructure to capture it and transport it is way too expensive for the amount of gas under discussion at any given flare.

 

[actaeon277]

Because some of those gasses (most) are very low specific heat content.
And yet are 'dirty'.
So, the entire system would have to be constantly cleaned and maintained. Especially the burners and control system.
You'd be putting more work into the system, than the work you'd get out of the system.

It's been 20 years since I had to punch the numbers and maintain the systems, but we (steel) had natural gas, blast furnace gas, and coke oven gas.
natural gas was the cleanest, and the highest specific heat content. Also, specific heat content was pretty uniform. You didn't have to adjust very much for a variable specific heat content.

I can't remember #2, but it was something like 1/10th (approx) specific heat content of natural gas. Was nasty dirty. Also, specific heat content varied wildly and had to be constantly corrected. The measuring systems were constantly going out of wack, because of the dirty content. Control systems got gummed up.

The third gas was 1/10th of that (approx). Nasty dirty. Wildly varying specific heat content. More problems measuring specific heat content, and controlling the system.



Now, the coke oven gas was only used to heat the coke oven batteries. Which also produced the coke oven gas. So, to just take that gas that was made, and then fed back into it's own system, required HUGE pipes and control dampers.
It was so nasty, that stuff would congeal into the pipes and form a tar. The tar had to be repeatedly blasted with steam, to try to keep it from sealing the pipes.
And yet, we had these pipes fail and fall, because of tons of weight of tar.
One pipe was 8 foot dia or so. The tar filled the entire pipe so much, that only about 4 inches was left for the gas to travel through.
This would cause the pressure/flow control system to constantly cycle causing great fluctuations in pressure/flow.
It was a NIGHTMARE.
But it was FREE, sort of, so we used it.
It used to be used for a bunch of stuff. Even fed into homes to heat them back in the 1900s.
But it was too much of a nightmare, so they sealed all that stuff up.


Now the Blast Furnace Gas, I think they just recycled that also. Into the Blast Furnace.
But, same as Coke Oven Gas, they stopped using it for anything else.

Now the COG gets used up in the Batterys. If you see that being burned off, there's an emergency and they don't want to dump it into the atmo. So they burn it off.
It burns orange.

The BFG gets burned off all the time, they don't use as much as they produce. So you'll see that almost all the time.
It burns blue.


Here's a Gary Works BFG flare.




I couldn't find a Gary Works COG flare stack, but they look like this

 

[indyblue]

My girlfriend lives in Danville right next to the city dump, and they recently built a gas recovery refinery and distribution system to capture all the methane produced by the garbage. I’m guessing the refinery, cleans it up and pipes it off somewhere to be a liquefied or used..

They have several large flares one of which is always burning, depending on the direction of the wind which flare is on. The flames are huge and light up the night sky for Miles around, surely that could at least turn of water into steam for power generation by letting it burn through a coil of water pipes or something.

I am old enough to remember the old rock Island refinery on Indys north west side, there were three huge flares next to each other, and during summer storms or windy nights would light up the whole western sky orange at night.

 

[actaeon277]

And there's nothing like working on a flare stack ignition system, hearing the steam valve clank open indicating first stage initiation (creating the "draw" for flow), then feeling the rainfall of the condensed steam, as your boss mouths WTF? Right before you elbow him to be the first one down the ladder.

Finding out the lock out procedure was not quite correct.

On the ground you can feel the flare.
Half way up where the equipment is.. barely safe. Barely

 

[Butch627]

Past by there again this morning at 530am. Sky was much darker than all surrounding areas from Calumet ave exit on toll road to past the big bridge

 

[rhamersley]

Because some of those gasses (most) are very low specific heat content.
And yet are 'dirty'.
So, the entire system would have to be constantly cleaned and maintained. Especially the burners and control system.
You'd be putting more work into the system, than the work you'd get out of the system.

It's been 20 years since I had to punch the numbers and maintain the systems, but we (steel) had natural gas, blast furnace gas, and coke oven gas.
natural gas was the cleanest, and the highest specific heat content. Also, specific heat content was pretty uniform. You didn't have to adjust very much for a variable specific heat content.

I can't remember #2, but it was something like 1/10th (approx) specific heat content of natural gas. Was nasty dirty. Also, specific heat content varied wildly and had to be constantly corrected. The measuring systems were constantly going out of wack, because of the dirty content. Control systems got gummed up.

The third gas was 1/10th of that (approx). Nasty dirty. Wildly varying specific heat content. More problems measuring specific heat content, and controlling the system.



Now, the coke oven gas was only used to heat the coke oven batteries. Which also produced the coke oven gas. So, to just take that gas that was made, and then fed back into it's own system, required HUGE pipes and control dampers.
It was so nasty, that stuff would congeal into the pipes and form a tar. The tar had to be repeatedly blasted with steam, to try to keep it from sealing the pipes.
And yet, we had these pipes fail and fall, because of tons of weight of tar.
One pipe was 8 foot dia or so. The tar filled the entire pipe so much, that only about 4 inches was left for the gas to travel through.
This would cause the pressure/flow control system to constantly cycle causing great fluctuations in pressure/flow.
It was a NIGHTMARE.
But it was FREE, sort of, so we used it.
It used to be used for a bunch of stuff. Even fed into homes to heat them back in the 1900s.
But it was too much of a nightmare, so they sealed all that stuff up.


Now the Blast Furnace Gas, I think they just recycled that also. Into the Blast Furnace.
But, same as Coke Oven Gas, they stopped using it for anything else.

Now the COG gets used up in the Batterys. If you see that being burned off, there's an emergency and they don't want to dump it into the atmo. So they burn it off.
It burns orange.

The BFG gets burned off all the time, they don't use as much as they produce. So you'll see that almost all the time.
It burns blue.


Here's a Gary Works BFG flare.
View attachment 330032



I couldn't find a Gary Works COG flare stack, but they look like this

View attachment 330034

Bethlehem up there used blast furnace and coke oven gas in their boilers for the power plant (89-90); wasn't there long enough to figure out if the pipes tarred up...got out when they wanted to put me on swing shift as a supervisor just after the first child was born. Got a sit down engineering job, then...quickly.