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34 comments on Gas supplies continue to be negotiated

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totoneila on April 4, 2006 - 4:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
One more question.  If the oil sands are in limestone, and water is becoming short in Canada, could they just convert the oil sands to 'power pellets' where we add water when we want to use the power inside?  We would have a problem with our cars spewing leftover sand all over the place, but that might work great in snow country.  =)

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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TJ on April 4, 2006 - 5:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wekll, if the U.S. had actually developed the external combustion vehicles proposed in the seventies and started manufacturing them we'd have a lot fewer problems now.  A little late, now.
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BOP on April 5, 2006 - 12:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

 Most of the process water is recovered and recycled. Pelletizing the oil sands and using the pellets as a fuel source is an interesting idea that I have not heard before.

 One problem may arise from the fact that at the microscopic level each sand grain is "coated" with water with the oil on the outside of that coating. Trying to burn this as raw fuel might be like trying to burn green wood.

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jondough on April 5, 2006 - 3:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Oil sands are about 10% oil, 10% water and 80% sand. A lot of the sand is actually really fine clay like bentonite that is damn hard to separate from the bitumen. No free lunch in the sand I'm afraid.
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