The threat from Iran grows ever graver Telegraph.co.uk The latter facility, known as the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, was discovered only by the skill of British, American and French intelligence agencies. With enough space for 3000 centrifuges, it lies beneath hundreds of feet of rock, meaning that it … See all stories on this topic »
Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 demand of oil from Saudi Arabia fell from ten million barrels per day (bpd) to three million bpd. As a result of the reduced production many small oil wells were closed down, including the Dammam oil field, home to Saudi Arabia’s oldest wells. Sadad al- Husseini, once the executive vice president for exploration and development at Saudi Aramco, said that, “we simply didn’t need small fields like Dammam, and in fact shut in fully or partially many other fields including Khurais, Khursaniya,…
This a very good forward-thinking suggestion. Why not use redundant facilities for practical purposes, such as housing etc?
Oil refineries: Sustainable communities for the post-oil world?
A ‘100% self-supporting housing solution for the post-oil world,’ the Oil Silo Home concept makes use of the thousands of oil storage units that will inevitably be abandoned in the peak oil era.
Today, a fascinating, forward-thinking adaptive reuse housing concept revolving around the planet’s dwindling supply of fossil fuels that’s sure to appeal to those of you who can’t quite get down with the idea of living several miles out to sea on a decommissioned oil rig.
The Oil Silo Home was conceived by Sarah Roberts, Eric Tan, Leon Lai, and Nico Schlapps of always-audacious Copenhagen-based design collective PinkCloud.dk as an entrant in the 2011 Dow Solar’s 2011 Design to Zero housing competition. Essentially, it’s a solar-powered spherical abode specifically designed for the post-oil world — this is, when the planet reaches peak oil (bound to happen sometime, folks) and the roughly 49,000 oil silos at over 660 refineries worldwide begin to be emptied and abandoned. A somewhat disconcerting scenario to contemplate but the Oil Silo Home makes the best of it by recycling obsolete structures of a bygone era into low-cost, low-maintenance domiciles. The decommissioned refineries themselves, filled with clusters of these uber-green multi-unit homes, could potentially be transformed into entire self-sustaining, clean-energy generating communities.
Obviously, the conversion of a forsaken oil silo into a proper home starts off with a super-thorough detox. In this instance, the designers envisioned in situ bioremediation, a process where lingering toxic contaminants are cleaned up by soil microbes at the site. Next, large-scale components of the homes are prefabricated off site to save time, money, and resources. Once the modular elements are installed, residents are ready to move on in to their extremely sturdy (built to stringent industrial standards, oil silos are resilient to just about anything whether it be water, wind, or zombies) and extremely sustainable retrofitted bubble digs.
The laundry list of green features of each Oil Silo Home is exhaustive: super-thick insulated wall panels, rainwater recycling systems, rooftop gardens, natural ventilation, EV charging stations, radiant floor heating, green walls, and the list goes on and on. Most crucial are the photovoltaic panels covering each spherical home. The designers explain: “The spherical geometry of oil silos provides optimal orientation for harvesting sunlight year-round. Simultaneously, surface exposure is maximized for the installation of solar devices. Sunlight is collected by photovoltaic panels and solar hot water heaters installed along the silo periphery.” Such an abundance of in-house clean energy production elevates the homes from carbon-neutral to carbon-positive status meaning that they generate more energy than they consume, feeding excess juice back into the grid.
Envisioned as an affordable housing solution, each Oil Silo Home is divided into three units that are accessible via a central pneumatic elevator or exterior walkway that wraps around each silo. How the designers decided to divvy up the space is interesting: one 968-square-foot unit is meant for a young couple; another, boasting twice the square footage, is meant for the typical four-person nuclear family; and the last and largest at over 2,400-square-feet is designed for multigenerational clans of up to six people.
The layout of each home explained in more detail:
Living and sleeping spaces circumnavigate the circular plan to provide copious natural lighting. The multi-generational home encompasses one full floor plate while the smaller two and four-person family homes are divided into two levels. All units feature large openings equipped with prefabricated balcony units for generous open-air ventilation. Interaction between neighbors is facilitated by situating the main entrance of each unit along the exterior walkway, thereby maintaining communal connection while providing private terrace space for each family.
Head on over to PinkCloud.dk for plenty more information and renderings of this ingenious post-oil housing scheme. And just think about this: Sometime down the line you could potentially live in a converted oil silo as your primary residence and keep a waterfront vacation property at a retrofitted oil rig. Wild, eh? And, of course, you’d need to decorate your properties these requisite interior decor items.
Australia could find itself short of fuel if Caltex shuts down its two domestic refineries, the mining union says.
Caltex Australia has flagged shutting its two domestic refineries in Sydney and Brisbane, putting 800 jobs at risk.
The move would leave NSW without any refining capability, the CFMEU said, and a war or natural disaster could create a national fuel supply crisis.
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Caltex Australia reported on Thursday that it had written down the value of the refineries by $1.5 billion, partly because of the effect of the strong Australian dollar on its business.
More than 800 people are employed at the refineries, in Kurnell in Sydney and Lytton in Brisbane, which provide almost one third of the country’s total refining capacity of about 800,000 barrels a day.
The closures would leave Australia with five operating refineries.
The announcement followed Shell’s statement last year it planned to close its refinery at Clyde and use the site as a storage and distribution site for imported refined fuel.
“When Shell announced it would close Clyde, it was quick to reassure there would be no threat to supply, as Sydney still had another refinery,” CFMEU NSW Energy District Secretary Lorraine Usher said in a statement today.
“Now that Kurnell’s future is also at risk, where does that leave us?”
She said further closures could jeopardise Australia’s oil refining capacity to the point where the country could struggle to meet its defence fuel supply needs.
“There are serious long-term implications,” she said.
“War or natural disaster in the Asia-Pacific could lead to a fuel supply crisis for Australia.”
Caltex Australia chief executive Julian Segal said yesterday that a review of the two refineries was six months from being completed.
He said shutting down the refineries was on the table but no decision had been made yet.
Cold Nuclear Fusion, an intensely disputed and largely discredited method for generating thermo-nuclear fusion at room temperature conditions. In nuclear fusion hydrogen atoms merge to form one helium atom, releasing energy. In its conventional form, such as that occurring within stars and hydrogen bombs, nuclear fusion requires high pressure and temperature, which force the atoms together. Proponents of cold nuclear fusion maintain that certain catalysts can coax hydrogen atoms to fuse without extreme pressure or heat. One form of cold nuclear fusion, known as muon-catalyzed cold fusion and first suggested in the 1940s, is undisputed. The process, in which a subatomic particle known as a muon captures two hydrogen atoms and forces them to fuse, has been demonstrated in the laboratory but appears not to be feasible as an energy source. The controversial form of cold nuclear fusion was first heard of in March 1989, when two University of Utah chemists, Martin Fleisch-mann and B. Stanley Pons, reported that they had produced fusion in a test tube at room temperature by running an electrical current through heavy water, a type of water in which the hydrogen atoms are of the isotope deuterium. They claimed that the current drove the deuterium atoms into a palladium rod in the water, forcing the atoms to pack closely enough to fuse. This announcement raised a furor in the scientific community. After other researchers failed to obtain similar results with the technique, a consensus emerged that the Utah scientists had used a flawed apparatus and misinterpreted the data from the experiment. A small but vocal minority of researchers continued to pursue variations on the approach.
Bibliography
Huizenga, John R. Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1992.
Mallove, Eugene F. Fire From Ice: Searching for the Truth behind the Cold Fusion Furor. New York: Wiley, 1991.
Safe graveyard Deccan Herald This was in part because its nuclear programme was small; the waste produced by its nuclear reactors was limited. In the wake of the India-US nuclear agreement and the lifting of global restrictions on nuclear trade with India, this programme is … See all stories on this topic »
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