Field trip

The reinvention of my career from modeler/deskman to real world engineer/labman took a leap forward this week. My coworkers and I drove all around southern Illinois and Indiana collecting water samples from oil production facilities.

So your first question is, there are oil fields in IL? I can proudly answer, YES, about 0.1% of the oil used in the US is produced in IL. The oil fields here are far along the path to depletion, but there are still thousands of stripper wells pumping about a barrel of oil per day along with about 40 barrels of water. The current IL oil production rate is 8 times less than the maximum historical rate, which was achieved in the early 1960's. A handful of small oil companies (most have less than 40 employees) maintain the pumps, pipes, and tanks.
The above photo shows both oil storage tanks (smaller) and oil/water separator tanks (larger). Oil is lighter than water, so it floats to the top of the tank where it is siphoned off to the oil storage tank. Tanker trucks collect the oil and haul it to a nearby refinery.

At this particular site, the oil mixed reasonably well with the water and left a sludge on our bucket. The rocks in the photo are black because of oily waste.

Next week, we'll visit a few coal mines to collect water. I'm hoping that we'll get to go inside the mines.

Why are we collecting this water? That will be a topic for future discussion.