Posted on 09/17/2006 6:33:24 PM PDT by thackney
If oil is the gold of the modern economy, then Frank Pringle is a 21st-century alchemist.
Instead of turning base materials into gold, Pringle turns them into oil. His philosopher's stone turns out to be microwaves. Used in a vacuum chamber, the microwaves help him pull oil from tires or oil shale rock. He can turn oil as thick as molasses into free-flowing crude. And he believes he can extract much of the oil remaining in capped wells.
Geologists said about 65 percent of oil in the ground is unrecoverable with current technology because it is too thick. Deposits of tar sands in Canada, for example, contain billions of barrels of oil but require large amounts of water and energy to extract.
State environmental officials said they believe as many as 237,000 abandoned oil wells are in northwestern Pennsylvania. That is where Col. Edwin Drake drilled what is believed to be the country's first commercial oil well in Titusville, Crawford County, in 1859. Oil production in Pennsylvania peaked in 1891, and the industry moved to Texas and elsewhere.
Pringle is raising $15 million to do his first test well in the Keystone State. He has raised a few million and plans to seek more from private investors. His plan calls for putting an antenna into the old wells and blasting them with microwaves to soften and gasify the oil.
No water would be required, and he said the amount of energy used in the process, the so-called energy balance, will be economical. The process will be environmentally clean, he said.
"It has to do with the frequency, and it has to do with the vacuum," Pringle said. "That's where our patents are."
Or will be, he said. Mobilestream has begun the patent process but hasn't yet received one.
Pringle and his staff of seven scientists continue to test and refine the process at their laboratory in West Berlin, N.J. He is also conferring with Pennsylvania's Department of Community and Economic Development and Department of Environmental Protection about state financial incentives for a tire reprocessing plant he hopes to build at the former U.S. Steel site in Fairless Hills, Bucks County.
In a series of tests witnessed by a Patriot-News reporter on Aug. 31, Pringle extracted oil from shredded tires. He turned Valero slurry oil, which is pourable but thick, like cold Hershey's chocolate syrup, into lighter, useable oil. And he pulled oil from tan, slightly greasy-feeling oil shale rock from Estonia.
Not long afterward, Mobilestream announced it had successfully cracked resid oil, the heavy, tarlike substance that remains after the refining of crude oil. Tests in the company's mass spectrometer confirmed the results.
Pringle placed the substances in a beaker and set them in his vacuum chamber microwave, which looks somewhat like a home microwave but is far different. There are millions of microwave frequencies, and the key is to find the right ones for the right materials, he said.
Once the calculations are made and the microwave turned on, he sat back in a comfortable chair with his ever-present cigar. Pringle, 63, whose office contains ocean fishing rods and a military weapon collection, has been a mechanical engineer for all of his working life.
In addition : in 1970 I spent winter quarter with my fellow architecture students in mexico. Funniest sight : brand new retread tires on all the cars but the SIDEWALLS were rotted down to the cords. The mexican government had decreed that NO foreign(american/others)rubber tires could be sold in mexico, HOPING that they could make their own rubber tires/industry. Mexican INDIANS competing with american/european/japanese engineering genius??!! Thus they had Taller retread stations all over the place : brand new retreads and rotted away sidewalls was all they had. Hydrogen and stupidity : the 2 most common elements in the universe....
Rubber and metal can't form an 'alloy'. You can powder the metal, then mix it with a variety of hydrocarbon compounds, like the flexible rubber magnets on the fridge, but a true alloy just ain't possible.
I've seen 'memory-metal', though. Wierd stuff.................FRegards
Amen............FRegards
Dang! All I got to tell y'all is whatever you do don't cut a bike tire up and try cooking it in a bowl in your microwave thinking you'll get oil. It don't work, even when you cut a hole in the top and stick a vacuum hose in. It just makes an awful mess and you can't hardly put that tire out when it catches fire.
Well, it was a brief article in either Popular Science or Mechanics. From what they describe, it has exactly the same characteristics described by Jesse Martel's son, who saw it in Roswell in 1947 : cigarette can't burn a hole thru it, can't cut it with scissors, wad it up like tinfoil and it doesn't crease, it just springs back to flat. Obviously no HUMAN was making this "memory metal"/rubber-metal alloy in 1947; ergo, it's alien technology, used by them for millenia. There is far more that we've discovered but I can't tell you about it here...
Pyrite, hematite, limonite, ilmenite, rutile...Could be interesting down there. Hope he choses his formations carefully or the accessory minerals might make things difficult. Worth keeping tabs on, though. Thanks, thackney.
Note: this topic is from 9/17/2006.Thanks thackney.
State environmental officials said they believe as many as 237,000 abandoned oil wells are in northwestern Pennsylvania.
Long ways away from the days of the gusher when the oil flow is so little they call it a micro wave.
I suspect the vacuum would be for the magnetron or klystron tube, or whatever they're using down the hole to create the microwaves. The hole won't need a vacuum any more than your household microwave does, but the equipment to create them seemingly does. I think the down-hole pressure will be the problem.
I'm not aware that large quantities of fresh water are required by refineries. There are a large number of refining centers located in relatively arid country -- e.g., Artesia, NM, Borger, TX, Big Spring, TX, Cushing, OK, Tulsa, OK, Salt Lake City, UT, El Dorado, KS etc.
By and large, refineries are located near where the oil is (or was). The concentration on the Gulf Coast is likely attributable to import (now) and export (then) needs.
Except that every drop of the Colorado River is overallocated.
And almost none of the water actually reaches the Gulf of California. Check the satellite photographs.
By and large, refineries are located near where the oil is (or was). The concentration on the Gulf Coast is likely attributable to import (now) and export (then) needs.
I bet those inland refineries mostly produce product for the immediate local and regional markets. The Gulf Coast refineries produce lots of product that is transported long distances to other parts of the US. There is pipeline running from the refineries in Corpus Christi, TX that goes to DFW international airport. The oil used is foreign and processed in a free trade zone. The portion used for international flights never has to pay tariffs or import fees, because it is reexported.
They still need lots of water. It's an issue where I live which is in a semi-arid environment. The local refineries have made great efforts to decrease the quantity of water they need to use in their refining processes.
http://www.epa.gov/region9/waterinfrastructure/oilrefineries.html
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