Hydraulic Oil Tanks

Font size: [A] [A] [A] e-mail this share this elizabeth skrapits / the citizens' voice Encana spokeswoman Wendy Wiedenbeck looks at some of the pipes that are laid underground between layers of concrete to case the well, as a precaution against groundwater contamination.

FAIRMOUNT TWP. - From using non-toxic oil for drilling to installing three levels of blowout prevention, Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc. is trying to ensure nothing happens at its first exploratory gas well site that isn't supposed to.

During a media tour of the Buda well site off Route 118 in Fairmount Township on Friday, Encana spokeswoman Wendy Wiedenbeck and Owen Stone, one of the company's essential personnel who lives in one of the on-site trailers, showed the steps the company is taking.

During a media tour of the Buda well site off Route 118 in Fairmount Township on Friday, Encana spokeswoman Wendy Wiedenbeck and Owen Stone, one of the company's essential personnel who lives in one of the on-site trailers, showed the steps the company is taking. "There are protocols in place to prevent incidents from happening. Owen's job is to prevent those incidents," Wiedenbeck said.

Drilling company taking steps to ensure safety - Citizens Voice

Dan Neil spends a couple of days driving Nissan's billion-dollar electric car gamble and comes away impressed. Let the Second Age of EV's begin.

The 2011 Nissan Leaf is the world's first mass-market all-electric automobile, to be built in the hundreds of thousands globally/annually by Nissan beginning this winter. And may I say, thank God and Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Nissan. Not so much a game changer as a game starter, the Leaf is a five-seat, five-door passenger EV sedan sold from California to Maine, with a nice, round 100-mile estimated range; 0-60 mph acceleration of around 10 seconds; and a top speed of 90 mph. The U.S. price is $32,780 (not counting the $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs) and includes a host of value-added, segment-competitive features, such as Bluetooth, navigation, 16-inch alloy wheels. Such a car would have been science fiction five years ago.

The Leaf also represents one of the most daring bids for market dominance I've ever seen in the car business because no one, and I mean no one, knows if the damned thing will sell. Mr. Ghosn, also chief executive of Renault, has spent much of the past two years running around like a lunatic, striking deals with governments, utilities and public-private partnerships, and is investing billions in the EV business, with assembly halls and battery factories scattered all over the world. He has foreclosed the chicken-and-egg, EV-and-charging infrastructure objection by dropping his entire business on the henhouse.

And yet, for such a world-historical automotive event as this, the Leaf driving experience is a curious nonevent. It occurs to me that among the infrastructural changes implied by the rise of EVs is the construction of a new critical vocabulary for electric cars. I can think of a hundred ways to describe a Maserati's ear-strafing exhaust note, but I'm rather at a loss to describe the nearly mute and rheostatic squeeze-and-go response of the Leaf. The braking system—a combination of a drag-inducing 3-kilowatt generator (regenerative braking) and conventional hydraulic brakes—has been electronically modulated to feel exactly like nothing in particular. The electric steering is likewise serviceably directional but devoid of anything you might call feel. To spend time in the Leaf is to appreciate how vivid and sensual a conventional automobile is, with its furious cylinder detonations, spinning cams, fisted gear-packs and lashing steel driveline. Compared with the Leaf, driving a Ferrari is like ingesting mescaline.

Getting a Charge From the 2011 Nissan Leaf | Rumble Seat by Dan Neil - Wall Street Journal

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I recently attended a meeting of the Clean Energy Coalition in Southeastern Michigan to see and learn more about the Eaton Hydraulic Launch Assist garbage truck purchased by the city of Ann Arbor. Hydraulic hybrids are similar to electric hybrids, except instead of storing energy captured from braking in batteries, the energy is stored in hydraulic fluid. The accumulator for the hydraulics stores compressed fluid which when released powers a hydraulic motor to provide power to the wheels of the vehicles during acceleration.

The point was made during the meeting that passenger cars and large SUVs or pickups have also been tested with hydraulic hybrid technology. The main reason that these technologies have not caught on in smaller vehicles is due to the weight of the hydraulic fluid. The amount of fluid needed would substantially increase the weight of a passenger vehicle thereby reducing the overall gains. This has largely left development focused on truck segments in recent years.

In trucks, hydraulic hybrids have a lot of potential for fuel savings. As John Kargul, EPA's Director of Technology Transfer pointed out during his presentation, hydraulic hybrids are 70% more efficient than traditional Class 6 trucks compared to less than 25% efficiency increase for electric hybrids during a cycle of acceleration to 35 mph and then braking back to 0 mph. This type of operation is well suited to inner-city deliver or garbage collection trucks where vehicles are starting and stopping often and results in 50% fuel savings, according to the EPA.

Hydraulic Hybrid Trucks Fill a Niche - Reuters

American airline stocks were down on Thursday (26-Aug-2010) and the Dow (-0.8%) fell for another day, as continued concerns about the strength of the economic recovery outweighed news jobless claims fell more than expected. A rebound in oil prices (+1.2%), to USD73.36, also hurt airline stocks.

Some weeks it just does not pay to get out of bed and American Airlines (-0.8%) is having one of those weeks, with its FAA fine as well the rejection of its TWU contract.

Federal Aviation Administration , the agency levied a USD24.2 million civil penalty against the airline for failing to follow MD-80 airworthiness directives. The airline said the fine was unwarranted and it would appeal.

Of course, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, assuming his cloak of consumer protection as the most activist secretary in decades, got into the act with his usual quotable quote on behalf of passengers.

American Airlines hit with FAA fine; Delta Air Lines sued, files for new routes - Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (subscription)

Federal environmental officials have agreed to take more public comments on a plan to contain and cap contamination at an Edgewater Superfund site, but leave the clean-up to some future redeveloper.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approach to the old Quanta Resources Industrial site drew criticism from environmentalists as soon as it was released.

New Jersey closed the Quanta site in 1981, citing hazards from more than a century of industrial pollution. Located along the Hudson River at the intersection of River and Gorge roads, the 24-acre property was a coal tar facility, then a waste oil terminal with a nearby chemical plant.

Even before heavy industrial operations began in the wake of the Civil War, industrial fill containing what are now known pollutants was used to turn marshes along the Hudson into suitable sites for piers, rail lines and factories.

EPA schedules public hearing on Edgewater Superfund site - newjerseynewsroom.com