Quote from: Lee Jay on 01/07/2021 02:05 pm>But your furnace or water heater may be only 80% thermally efficient. >Our furnace has an AFUE rating of 95%. In MI we seriously need it.
>But your furnace or water heater may be only 80% thermally efficient. >
Old gas wells are frequently used to store gas for future use. Like store in summer for use in winter. The wells already had gas in them until they ran out of gas due to low pressure at the well head. SpaceX might use the old gas wells as storage of methane for future liquification. Thousands of cubic feet (how gas is measured in the US), can be stored in these abandoned wells in gas form under pressure. Then release the gas to be liquified for liquid methane for rocket us. Even natural gas can be bought cheaply on the spot market in bulk and stored in these wells. Or, gas could be made synthetically and stored. If good records were kept on these wells as the gas was extracted, they know home many cubic feet of gas they can store in them. It avoids the construction of large pressurized or liquified above ground tankage. Makes perfect sense, especially if a lot of rockets are going to be launched from Boca Chica.
Also, whenever they decide to make methane, these wells could store it. Solar is only good during the day when they can make the methane and store it for night launches. These wells are a win-win situation. Store cheap available natural gas now and whenever they begin to make methane, use these storage wells which are on site. No need for large storage domes.
Solar is only good during the day ...
They would not have drilled a well initially if there wasn't a good payback source of natural gas.
Quote from: spacenut on 01/11/2021 05:56 pmThey would not have drilled a well initially if there wasn't a good payback source of natural gas. As I understand it, the well was there already. I didn't think SpaceX drilled any new gas wells.
It's an interesting idea for bulk storage, but it would almost certainly require reprocessing of the extracted gas before it can be used as propellant (regardless of how pure the methane you pump in is, it's going to pick up contaminants before you pump it back out) in addition to re-chilling and re-compressing back to a liquid, as well as road transport to the launch site tanks. That seems like a lot of work in order to have the fleet of tankers drive a short distance to your LCH4 reprocessing site rather than drive a slightly longer distance to existing LCH4 reprocessing and storage sites near Brownsville already owned and operated by someone else. Given that you'd need to purchase and transport LCH4 from those facilities to fill the gas reservoir in the first place, as well as needing an on-site tank farm to collect the re-extracted and post-filtered post-liquified gas again before it can be unloaded to tankers to move to the launch site, it seems like a lot of hassle to go to for little benefit.
The gas well was drilled, tapped, and not-technically-but-in-practice abandoned once continued operation was beyond economic value. The only reason it was not capped at that time as required by law is that capping is expensive, and technically 'operating' a few grams per year is cheaper. It is safe to assume that any gas remining is either too low in volume to make extraction worthwhile, too poor quality to make extraction worthwhile, or both. From the other discussion:Quote from: edzieba on 01/08/2021 11:06 amIt's an interesting idea for bulk storage, but it would almost certainly require reprocessing of the extracted gas before it can be used as propellant (regardless of how pure the methane you pump in is, it's going to pick up contaminants before you pump it back out) in addition to re-chilling and re-compressing back to a liquid, as well as road transport to the launch site tanks. That seems like a lot of work in order to have the fleet of tankers drive a short distance to your LCH4 reprocessing site rather than drive a slightly longer distance to existing LCH4 reprocessing and storage sites near Brownsville already owned and operated by someone else. Given that you'd need to purchase and transport LCH4 from those facilities to fill the gas reservoir in the first place, as well as needing an on-site tank farm to collect the re-extracted and post-filtered post-liquified gas again before it can be unloaded to tankers to move to the launch site, it seems like a lot of hassle to go to for little benefit.
If you want to store gas, is it safe to put gas into a dry hole? I would think you would want to find a formation you knew was gas tight, or was when you stopped pumping out, anyway. The dry hole might have reached an area where fractures led to the surface and let gas leak out, no? I have no idea if that's geologically correct though.
SpaceX — through subsidiary "Lone Star Mineral Development" — intends to drill natural gas wells near the company's Starship facility in Texas, likely for the methane that fuels its Raptor rocket engines, reports Bloomberg's @SergioChapa:
Lone Star is in a legal dispute with Dallas Petroleum Group before Texas' energy regulator, over ownership claims inactive wells on an 806-acre plot of land.