Green Petroleum

How Oil and Gas Can Be Environmentally Sustainable

M. R. Islam, A. B. Chhetri, M. M. Khan

• Publisher: Wiley-Scrivener
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118444078
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Chemistry
• Index: Chemistry

Can "green petroleum" reverse global warming and bring down high gasoline prices? Written in non-technical language for the layperson, this book investigates and details how the oil and gas industry can "go green" with new processes and technologies, thus bringing the world's most important industry closer to environmental and economic sustainability.

This book unravels the mysteries of the current energy crisis and argues that solutions to global warming will come only from the development of new technologies. Discussed here are the reasons why petroleum operations, as they are now, are not sustainable; how each practice treads an inherently implosive path; and how each spells irreversible damage to the planet's ecosystem. Fossil fuel consumption is not the culprit; rather, the practices involved, from exploration to refining and processing, are responsible for the current damage to the environment.

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 ‘Greening’: What does it Entail?

The devastating cultural impacts of extremely fundamental ideas start to register very loudly and sharply at moments of massive crisis such as the present. This is true with environmental concerns, and it is even truer in economics, which is the focus of the post-Renaissance modern world. However, few recognize those impacts, and even fewer understand from where the impacts originate. In this process, the entire world either continues to ignore the impacts, or does not see or hear these impacts coming.

In today’s world, focused on tangible and externals, greening is often synonymous with coloring an object green. If this were the case, greening of petroleum operations would simply mean painting gas stations green (this has actually been done, as easily evidenced in the rush to paint green). In order that “sustainability” or “green” status be deemed real and provided with a scientific basis, there are criteria to be set forth and met. Nowhere is this need clearer or more crucial than in the characterization of energy sources. Petroleum fuels being the principal driver of today’s energy needs, one must establish the role of petroleum fluids in the overall energy picture. One must not forget that petroleum products (crude oil and gas) are natural resources and they cannot be inherently unsustainable, unless there is an inherent problem with nature. Here, it is crucial to understand nature and how nature operates, without any preconceived bias. This book is based on the premise that true green exists in nature and we must emulate nature in order to develop technologies that are green. In this, we cannot rely on what has happened in the modern age in terms of technology development. After all, none other than Nobel Laureate chemists have designated our time as a ‘technological disaster’. We do not have to wait for the ‘Occupy Wall street’ folks to tell us there is a need for change.

1.2 The Science of Change: How will our Epoch be Remembered?

Energy policies have defined our modern civilization. Politicizing energy policies is nothing new, but bipartisan bickering is new for the Information Age. The overwhelming theme is “change” (similar to the term “paradigm shift”), and both sides of the “change” debate remain convinced that the other party is promoting a flat-earth theory. One side supports petroleum production and usage, and the other side supports the injection of various “other” energy sources, including nuclear, wind, and solar. This creates consequences for scientific study. The petroleum industry faces the temptation of siding with the group that promotes petroleum production and continued usage with only cosmetic change to the energy consumption side, namely in the form of “energy saving” utilities. The other side, of course, has a vested interest in opposing this move and spending heavily on infrastructure development using renewable energy sources. Both sides seem to agree on one thing: there is no sustainable solution to the energy crisis, and the best we can do is to minimize the economic and environmental downfall. This book shows, with scientific arguments, that both sides are wrong, and there is indeed a sustainable solution to petroleum production and operations. With the proposed schemes, not only would the decline of the economic and environmental conditions be arrested, but one could improve both these conditions, launching our civilization onto an entirely new path.

This book is about scientific change that we can believe in. This is not about repeating the same doctrinal lines that got us in this modern-day “technological disaster” mode (in the word of Nobel Laureate chemist Robert Curl). The science of true change is equated with the science of sustainability. This change is invoked by introducing both a natural source and a natural pathway. This book summarizes an essential, critical distinction between the outcomes of natural processes and the outcomes of engineered processes that conventional science discourse and work have either missed or dismissed. In contrast to what defines a change in a natural process, the outcomes of engineered processes can change if there is a change in only the source or only along the pathway, and there may be no net change in outcome if changes at the source cancel out changes along the pathway, or vice-versa.

Today, the entire focus has been on the source (crude oil in petroleum engineering), and the role of the pathway has been completely misunderstood or deliberately ignored. Numerous schemes are being presented as sustainable alternatives (sustainable because the source has been replaced with another source while keeping the process intact). This mode of cognition has been a very typical philosophy for approximately the last 900 years and has many applications in other disciplines, including mathematics (i.e., theory of chaos). This book deconstructs this philosophy and presents scientific analysis that involves both the source and the pathway. As a result, all the analyses are consistent with the first premise, and no question remains unanswered.

1.3 Are Natural Resources Finite and Human Needs Infinite?

Over a decade ago, Lawrence Lerner, Professor Emeritus in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Chicago, was asked to evaluate how Darwin’s theory of evolution was being taught in each state of the United States (Lerner 2000). In addition to his attempt to find a standard in K-12 teaching, he made some startling revelations. His recommendations created controversy, and many suggested that he was promoting “bad science” in name of “good science.” However, no one singled out another aspect of his findings. He observed that “some Native American tribes consider that their ancestors have lived in the traditional tribal territories forever.” He then equated “forever” with “infinity” and continued his comment stating, “Just as the fundamentalist creationists underestimate the age of the earth by a factor of a million or so, the Black Muslims overestimate by a thousand-fold and the Indians are off by a factor of infinity.” (Lerner 2001). This confusion between “forever” and “infinity” is not new in modern European culture. In the words of Albert Einstein, “There are two things that are infinite, human stupidity and the Universe, and I am not so sure about the Universe.” Even though the word “infinity” emerges from a Latin word, infinitas, meaning “unboundedness,” for centuries this word has been applied in situations in which it promotes absurd concepts. In Arabic, the equivalent word means “never-ending.” In Sanskrit, similar words exist, and those words are never used in mathematical terms as a number. This use of infinity to enumerate something (e.g., infinite number of solutions) is considered to be absurd in other cultures.

Nature is infinite - in the sense of being all-encompassing -within a closed system. Somewhat paradoxically, nature as a system is closed in the sense of being self-closing. This self-closure property has two aspects. First, everything in a natural environment is used. Absent anthropogenic interventions, conditions of net waste or net surplus would not persist for any meaningful period of time. Secondly, nature’s closure system operates without the benefit of, or dependence upon, any internal or external boundaries. Because of this infinite dimension, we may deem nature, considered in net terms as a system overall, to be perfectly balanced. Of course, within any arbitrarily selected finite time period, any part of a natural system may appear out of balance. However, to look at nature’s system without acknowledging all of the subtle dependencies that operate at any given moment introduces a bias that distorts any conclusion that is asserted on the basis of such a narrow approach.

From where do the imbalance and unsustainability that seem so ubiquitously manifest in the atmosphere, the soil, and the oceans originate? As the “most intelligent creation of nature,” men were expected to at least stay out of the natural ecosystem. Einstein might have had doubts about human intelligence or the infinite nature of the Universe, but human history tells us that human beings have always managed to rely on the infinite nature of nature. From Central American Mayans to Egyptian Pharaohs, from Chinese Hans to the Mannaeans of Persia, and from the Edomites of the Petra Valley to the Indus Valley civilization of the Asian subcontinent, all managed to remain in harmony with nature. They were not necessarily free from practices that we no longer consider (Pharaohs sacrificed humans to accompany the dead royal for the resurrection day), but they did not produce a single gram of an inherently anti-nature product, such as DDT. In modern times, we have managed to give a Nobel Prize (in medicine) for that invention.

The first few chapters of this book examine how our ancestors dealt with energy needs and the knowledge they possessed that is absent in today’s world. Regardless of the technology these ancient civilizations lacked that many might look for today, our ancestors were concerned with not developing technologies that might undo or otherwise threaten the perceived balance of nature that, today, seems desirable and worth emulating. Nature remains and will remain truly sustainable.

1.4 The Standard of Sustainable Engineering

Early in the twentieth century, alcohol was placed under Prohibition in the United States, even for medicinal purposes. Today, the most toxic and addictive form of alcohol is not only permitted, but is promoted as a part of a reputedly “refined” life style. Only about four to six generations ago, in the mid- to late-19^th century, interracial marriages and marriages between cousins were forbidden (some still are, e.g., Paul and Spencer 2008), women and African-Americans did not have the right to vote in elections, and women (after marriage) and slaves (after sale) were required to change their surname and identity. In many parts of rural Quebec, well into the 20^th century, women were required to replace all their teeth with a denture as a gift to the groom. Today, as part of the reaction to the extreme backwardness of these reactionary social practices, same-sex marriage is allowed in Canada, much of the United States, and Europe. Marriage among siblings is even allowed in some “enlightened” parts of Europe, and changing one’s surname has become a sign of backwardness. Although the religious establishment’s various sanctions surrounding these relationships - not to mention the status of these various relations themselves - have actually changed very little, a vast propaganda was loosed nonetheless upon the world, proclaiming the alleged modernization of all human and social relations represented by such “reversals.” However, all that has “changed” is the standard as to what is acceptable. Similarly, about one to two generations ago, organic food was still the most abundant and most affordable food. Then, along came the notorious “Green Revolution,” fostered mainly in developing countries by U.S.-based agribusiness interests often acting through governments. “Productivity” reportedly doubled and tripled in less than a decade. Today, organic food in general costs three times more (200% increase) than non-organic. In this process, the actual quality of the food declined. Yet, the standard had been shifted again, rendering possible an extensive widening of profit margins in the most powerfully positioned sectors of food production and distribution. When, where, and how does such a reversal in the trend of quality and pricing start, like the reversal in the trend of the quality of certain social relations and the value placed on them? In either case, investigating and establishing true sustainability entails a deep analysis of the entire matter of what constitutes a standard, what social forces are in a position to shift standards, how the process of rewriting standards operates, and where and when may people intervene to empower themselves and put an end to being victimized in such processes.

Chapter 3 discusses and discloses the problem inherent in the standards that we use today - standards or ideals that are not natural. Chapter 4 explains that, by forcing a non-natural standard or ideal in all engineering calculations, all subsequent conclusions are falsified. This chapter also makes it clear that with New Science we are simply incapable of getting of the current ‘environmental disaster’.

Nature exists in a state of dynamic balance, both in space and time. In its attempts to comprehend fundamental changes of state within a natural environment, the conventional science of tangibles hits a wall, especially when it comes to the treatment of time’s role at such bifurcation points. Why? Such a situation follows from the fact that the actual rate at which time unfolds at such points within a natural process is itself part of that process. This means that time cannot be treated as varying independently of that process. Very much akin to the problem of standards falling under the dictate of special, usually private, interests, the mathematics used by the science of tangibles becomes hijacked. For centuries, mathematics warned its users about the falsehoods that will arise when differentiating a discontinuous function as though it were continuous, or integrating over a region of space or time that is discontinuous as though it were continuous. In practice, meanwhile, pragmatism has often prevailed, and the reality of a natural system’s output often bearing little or no relationship to what the theoretical mathematical model predicted is treated as an allowable source of error. However, what could be expected to eventuate if the standpoint of the science of intangibles, based on a conception of nature’s system as one that is perfect (in the sense of complete and self-contained), were adopted instead? Many of these howling contradictions that emerge from retaining the conventional science of tangibles in areas where its modeling assumptions no longer apply would turn out to be removable paradoxes.

The conundrum arises in the first place mainly (and/or only) because the tangible aspects of any phenomenon do not go beyond the very small element in space, i.e., Δs → 0, and even a smaller element in time, i.e., Δt = 0 (meaning, time t = “right now”). Within the space-time of a purely mathematical universe, Newton’s calculus gives reliable answers concerning the derivative of a function based on taking the limit of the difference quotient of the function as change in any selected variable of the said function approaches zero. However, regardless of that fact, is the underlying first assumption correct? That is to say, what fit may be expected between the continuity of processes in a natural system and the continuity of mathematical space time that undergirds whether we can even speak of a function’s derivative? In general, the results in the mathematical reality and the natural reality don’t match, at least not without “fudging” of some kind. Is it reasonable to consign such a mismatch to “error,” or is something else at work here? The authors believe the incompatibility has a deeper source, namely in an insurmountable incompatibility between the continuum of mathematical space-time and the essentially dynamic balance of natural systems.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the only models used and developed continually have been based on what we characterize in this work as the science of tangibles. This book reviews the outcome of these models as manifested in the area of energy management. The prejudicial components of “steady state” based analysis and assumptions have begun to emerge in their true light mostly as an unintended byproduct of the rise of the Information Age. From this perspective, it becomes possible to clarify how and why modeling anything in nature in terms of a steady state has become unsustainable.

The unexpected fallout that we are ascribing to the emergence of the Information Age is simply this: in light of the undreamt-of expansion in the capacity to gather, store, and manipulate unprecedented quantities of data on anything, the science of tangibles calling itself “New Science,” that developed out of the European Renaissance has turned out to be a double-edged sword. All its models are based on the short term, so short that they practically eliminate the time dimension (equivalent to assigning Δt = 0). However, these models are promoted as “steady state” models with the assertion that, as Δt approaches ∞, a steady state is reached. This syllogism is based on two false premises: (1) that there is such a state as steady state and (2) that nature is never in balance.

By proceeding according to a perspective that accepts and embraces the inherent overall dynamic balance of natural systems as given, it soon emerges that all these models are inherently flawed and are primarily responsible for transforming the truth into falsehood. That is because their continued promotion obscures key differences between real (natural) and artificial (created by violating natural process). Models based on steady-state have been developed and promoted by all the great names of natural and social science over the last 400 years, from Sir Isaac Newton and Lord Kelvin to the economist John Maynard Lord Keynes. However, although presented as the only acceptable bridging transition from natural science to engineering, all such models are in fact freighted with the enormous baggage of a Eurocentric cultural bias. A most glaring feature of technological development derived on the basis of this “steady state” bridging transition from theory to practice has been its denaturing of how time actually operates, reducing the meaningful sense of time to whatever exists “right now.”

Thus, for example, in medical science this has strengthened the tendency to treat symptoms first and worry about understanding how disease actually works later. In economic development, it amounts to increasing wasteful habits in order to increase GDP. In business, it amounts to maximizing quarterly income even if it means resorting to corruption. In psychology, it means maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain (both in the short-term). In politics, it amounts to obliterating the history of a nation or a society. In mathematics, it means obsessions with numbers and exact (and unique) solutions. In technology, it means promoting comfort at the expense of long-term damage. In philosophy, it means positivism, behaviorism, and materialism. In religion, it means obsession with ritual and short-term gains. This steady state doesn’t exist anywhere and contradicts fundamental traits of nature, which is inherently dynamic. When it was recognized that steady states were non-existent, the time function was introduced in pra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: From the Pharaonic Age to the Information Age: Have we Progressed in Technology Development Skills?
• Chapter 3: How Long Has This ‘Technological Disaster’ Been in the Making? Delinearized History of Civilization and Technology Development
• Chapter 4: Is Modern Science Capable of Discerning Between True and False?
• Chapter 5: Fundamentals of Mass and Energy Balance
• Chapter 6: A True Sustainability Criterion and its Implications
• Chapter 7: What is Truly Green Energy?
• Chapter 8: Good Light and Bad Light
• Chapter 9: Do You Believe in Global Warming?
• Chapter 10: Is the 3R’s Mantra Sufficient?
• Chapter 11: Truly Green Refining and Gas Processing
• Chapter 12: Greening of Flow Operations
• Chapter 13: Greening of Enhanced Oil Recovery
• Chapter 14: Deconstruction of Engineering Myths Prevalent in the Energy Sector
• Chapter 15: Conclusions
• References
• Index