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BamaATL

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Posts posted by BamaATL

  1. 12 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    If those are anything like the Boston dynamics machines, those are really a crazy augment for a battlefield. It can run supplies or advance scout a route, and doesn't really give a shit about frag blast as long as the structure survives. The brushless motors are super durable and they're reinforced to hell, I'd bet those things make great ammo gophers

    Wait until they are cheap enough to strap bombs to.  Need to clear a trench or foxhole?  

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  2. 1 minute ago, KYHorn said:

     

     

    The first inclination is idea that the Ukrainians are trading eastern positions to put this pressure on Russia in north.  A thought did occur to me, what if they are also attempting to lure Russian forces out of entrenched positions in the East?  Just a thought anyway.  

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  3. 1 hour ago, nolongerU2horn said:

     

    It says a lot the UAE Exotic Falconry and Finance account (what on fucking earth), is calling for his resignation because the perceive him as gay, bi, whatever.  No mention at of the fact that he's a shitheel of a candidate, regardless of his sexual choices.  

    Says more about them and who they think they are influencing than anyone else.  

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  4. 3 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

    FYI, it is the same Russian spelling for both towns. It's easier to search for these towns in Cyrillic because there is quite a bit of variation in the transliterated spelling (even within Google).  Technically, Ukraine has towns with the same name as well, although the Ukrainian alphabet is slightly different so there is a minor variation in spelling. A literal translation might be something like Town of Love ("lyubim" means "we love", "ovka" is used here to denote a town or place name). But since this is Russia, I'd just call it Love Shack.  

    Probably has a glory hole or two.  

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  5. 37 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    I think you're likely looking at the wrong town. There is another town with the same name much closer to the border in the area we know they are. 

    Based on this, I'm pretty sure you are correct

    Korenevo is north and west of the western village of Lyubimivka.  What is confusing is that there also appears to be an eastern village, very close to Kursk proper with the same name (this might be a difference in Ukrainian spellings and Russian).  

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  6. 21 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    I wonder if that reservoir next to the plant serves as the fresh water source for Kursk?  Just in looking at the satellite overviews it's really the only large body of water I see.  That isn't to say they (the Russians) wouldn't have other places to source water from, but that might be where the bulk of the water treatment for the area is done.  This would make some sense, as if you have a humongous infrastructure project like a nuclear power plant, dam and reservoir, why wouldn't you do treatment there as well?  

    I'm not sure that shutting off water to ordinary citizens is a great idea (it may well be crime, which the Ukrainians don't want to commit) but if push comes to shove, armies require water.  In any event, capturing this area may well mean that don't just control the electricity in the area, but you also potentially control water as well.  

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  7. 33 minutes ago, PTINS said:

    I will tell you what I know from a US perspective, where there is substantial operational and safety oversight (industry peer review) and instrumentation and telemetry that permits operational balancing on a near real time basis. Custody transfer measurement affects $$$, between the regulated pipelines, for profit pipelines, marketing companies, municipalities, end use customers, etc.  I would be surprised if Russia is anywhere close to US standards. The mega $$$ joint ventures w/ western oil companies would be the exception.

    To clarify one thing, it is a "slug" , not sludge, of liquid hydrocarbons that condensed from the gas stream. You sell the heat content of the gas or the volume (gallons) of the liquid, with the liquid value ~ 5-10X gas value, depending on many different factors. The Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) are my domain.

    This station is primarily a measurement facility.  That would include monitoring pressure, temperature, density, and gas composition to measure the volume and thermal content of the gas being delivered. Generally, you would have some version of this at every facility along the pipeline. Generally, Custody transfer measurement is a higher level of accuracy than operational measurement.

    Usually you have measurement wherever gas enters and leaves the system, or close to lines of demarcation (borders/state lines/open water crossings, etc.).  In this case, the border crossing warrants measurement, "...this is how much gas was delivered from Russia to Ukraine." From the map below, you can see the line crossing into Ukraine near Sumy, where it branches from 1 big line into 3 smaller ones. Keep in mind this is a schematic depiction, the actual connections maybe closer to the border or further into Ukraine depending on the terrain, proximity to roads, power lines, cities, etc. Everyone of the these branches would have measurement.
     

    image.png.27d62b4d51c361d4e958a2767bb5bc8a.png 

    Gas (vapor) is different from oil or gasoline (liquids).  For liquid pipelines the ins and outs have to balance or something bad happens, you open a valve before you close a valve.  The compressibility of the gas allows some surge capacity; you to put more in than you take out "pack the line" and simply raise the pressure in the pipeline. Long, large diameter pipelines have a large amount of "surge or storage" capacity. Taking out more than you put in is similar, but different. Lower operating pressures affect delivery capacities, so there are limits on taking more than the contract quantities.

    Ideally, the instrumentation along the pipeline has alarms for any operational anomaly that can be identified, and corrected or remedied before something bad happens. Gas will leak until it is shut off, dissipates, for finds an ignition source. Contrary to what 99% of non-industry people think, Safety is always the top priority.

    I'm gonna go ahead and assume safety isn't the biggest priority in Russia.  

  8. 3 hours ago, PTINS said:

    The picture shows the above ground assets of the Sudzha Gas Meter Station in Russia. I have no information on the station itself, so I will comment on what I see and other information that is available.

    The pipeline flows from the NE (Russia) to the SW (Ukraine). The 56" line is buried, and the above ground assets include 4 banks of Meter Tubes, 2 of which were damaged.

    If there was damage to the pipeline itself, there would be a crater ~ 100+ ft across and 20 feet deep, with a fireball 100's of feet high, consistent with the rupture of a 56" natural gas pipeline flowing at 1,000 # of pressure, sounding something like a jet engine at full after burner. 

    I expect that the yellow box in the lower left corner is an area that would include the manifolding for switching flows between the various meter banks.

    This indicates the measurement may be compromised, but the pipeline itself is intact, at least as much as it was before last week.

     image.png.f779b9a414ac9c3e7397bb2d9e51ef82.png

    TLDR.

    The Urengoy (Brotherhood) pipeline was commissioned in 1984 and originates in the Urengoy Gas Field, ~ 2,000 miles away in northern Siberia. The pipeline flow 700+ miles across Ukraine, splitting as it enters near Sumy (Sudzha), and at various points in Ukraine and again as it moves further towards Eastern Europe. 

    The Sudzha meter station shows the meter tubes, consistent with the characterization of Sudzha as a meter station, simply a custody transfer measurement point between Russia and Ukraine, to assist in doing a material balance across the pipeline system. 

    Typically, a mainline Block Valve (BV) is closed and the gas is diverted from the below ground mainline to the above ground assets, in this case, the meter tubes. Each of the 4 meter banks appears to have 5 tubes (size unknown), but 5 24" meter tubes would handled the full flow gas stream.  Most measurement systems require laminar rather that turbulent flow, so you need a long straight run of pipe upstream (~ 20 pipe diameters) of the meter and downstream (5-10 pipe diameters).  This tells me the measurement capacity is (a) ~ 4X the gas flow, or the mainline flow is split into 2 smaller streams, each with a typical 100% redundancy or (b) requires 3 measurement banks, with one spare or (c) none of the above.  

    The meters and tubes are specialty pieces of equipment, but smallish in nature. Necessary for most accurate measurement possible, but the older technology still works. Probably sanctioned items, but ...

    Sudzha but does have any compression facilities nor does it show a "slug catcher", a structure constructed to remove any condensate (liquids) from the pipeline. 

    UTOS Slug Catcher & Compressor Station, near Cameron, Louisiana

    image.png.bf11288d46d2d5f637487421e374ab45.png
     

    The mainline compressor sets are major pieces of equipment and the heart of the pipeline system, up to ~ 25,000 HP gas turbines with centrifugal compressors. Damages to these would be huge, irreplaceable due to sanctions. The slug catchers are massive structures ( ~15 pipe sections, 1,000 feet long, 42" diameter, with associated manifolds and gas/liquid separation capacity) fabricated to catch and stabilize the large slugs of liquids that condense in the pipelines. These are not located at the Sudzha Station.

    Ukraine showed enough to get the message across; "We are here and we could have done much worse." At the same time, they have 700 miles of a Russian pipeline crossing Ukraine. They could stop the flow any time they wanted, but they also need the gas.

    A question for you on this:

    Does this station more or less exist to monitor pressure?  (If I understood correctly, it isn't for sludge removal, based upon what you can see).

     

  9. 1 hour ago, pacman said:

    Agree, this trope with "latinos" as one single voting block is ridiculous and a key reason Trump won 2016, imo. Democrats better have moved on from this failed concept long ago.

    Wait, Wait, Wait, you mean to tell me there are groups within the group of Latino's?  All this time I thought they were one unified people with a singular goal.  

  10. 9 minutes ago, Herbie Hancock said:

    Fires at nuclear power plants don’t typically end well.

    Generally not, but if I recall, the reactor(s) have been in cold shut down for well over a year.  From what I recall, the fuel rods will still be hot for a period of several years, but not dangerous during this period.  The fire in the cooling tower isn't great, it would render that useless in the future, but I don't think there is any current concern for the actual reactors.  At this point, Ukraine has more or less overcome/learned to deal with the power from this plant, so I don't think that's a big concern either.  Lastly, I think I remember that all of these reactors were due to be decommissioned or rebuilt within the next few years prior to the war.  

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  11. 56 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

    This is floating around, looks like a tire fire inside the cooling tower

     

    if so, they maybe trying to ruin the cooling tower. The fire is at the base, and air is sucked in through the base and pumped out the top of the tower.

    I'd say that's pretty clear signaling from Putin and Co, he's saying, "I don't give a fuck if you take Kursk NPP, I'm not giving you Zaporizhzha or anything else back in trade."

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  12. 21 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

    To be extra clear, that map gif has been going around- it's very aspirational

    Of that I have no doubt, from one side and definitely a level of propaganda.  However, there are a couple of striking things about it.

    1.  It looks almost identical to the breakout from 2 years ago, in terms of staging and maneuver.  

    2.  The Ukrainians are better equipped this go around and appear to have gotten better at it, while the Russians appear to have an abysmally slow response, and have gotten worse at defending it.  Additionally, unlike the eastern breakout of 2 years ago, where the Russians had significant reserves behind their lines, in this case, in this area, their reserves are minimal.  

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