Study preparations

It's not long now till I start reading my second degree at UCL. I've recently sent off a confirmation of my interest in taking a place on an MSc chemical engineering course. I'm really interested in reading engineering as a practical application of the analytical, mathematical and organisational skills I gained as a chemistry student.

I've had a close look at the course synopsis at other institutions and there's good overlap in lots of areas so I've got a good idea that I'll be learning about things like fluid particle systems, process dynamics and control and environmental systems. In the course at UCL there's a lot of emphasis on thermodynamics. I've also got the opportunity to take one option module out of Law for managers, project management and mastering entrepreneurship. These last modules afford opportunities to develop in areas that really interest me. At the moment I'm really leaning toward the project management because I'd rather not take a punt on entrepreneurship. I know that if I took the choice to learn the law or the project management, I'd be taught concrete skills that I'd be able to take to the job. The full list of modules is here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/chemeng/graduate/msc_content.html.

I'm really interested in specialising in engineering and getting to grips with developing industrial envrionments toward safety, loss prevention and efficiency gains.

Old Friends

I met up with some of my friends from school / college and went for lunch. It was a really fun time and we reminisced about all sorts of different things that happened during our time at school. We also talked about what we were up to in our social lives and what kinds of things we were doing in our spare time. The conversation was rich and flowed well without pause but we kept coming back to one specific topic - education.

Education
As we had all been through the education machine ( school / college and university) we each had a degree and we kept talking about how we got on at university as we had all recently graduated. This was an interesting conversation in itself as we all went to different universities and read different courses. I contributed all that I had done at university at York and how I really enjoyed my time but moreover, how I had grown as a person and developed from quite a shy and retiring person to a vibrant guy with varied interests and hobbies. This conversation continued for a while fine before I sensed an undercurrent to the conversation. As time went on, we began talking about what we were up to post-graduation and then I hit upon the sensation I felt earlier as tension regarding the jobs market and further education.

Employment
As I've already stated in my profile here, I read chemistry at York and have been accepted into UCL to start an engineering masters in the September. I've already sorted my next path out but I talked to my friend and she said that she was freaking out. She was really nervous about what she wanted to do now as she had no idea and the current jobs market (as of July 2011) is pretty pants. She had told me previously that she wanted to work as an archivist as she had a real affinity for books and written records. She has now lost her passion for that idea but remains really interested in books and the written word. The problem for her is that she read English literature and she is now looking for some general admin work to tide her over. My other friend read a business degree with a gap year. These degree choices aren't the problem; the job choice is. As they have general english skills degrees, they have to compete with all the other people who want a general admin job and have general english skills like graduates in history, history of art, sociology, media. This list can go on and on. There are so few jobs in this sector and they are very heavily oversubscribed. I recently read the figure of 83 graduates going for every job out there.

Engineering
There is a massive need for engineers in the UK as there is plenty of new infrastructure to help install, especially in the IT sector where new servers and electronics engineering are essential to keep pace with modern living and the demand for fast, on-demand services. This sector requires specialist skills in maths, physics and depending on the flavour of engineering, further knowledge in a natural science (physics / biology / chemistry / medicine). This immediately cuts out a lot of the 'normal' competition from general skilled graduates and easily separates the workers from the blaggers as it's hard to 'wing it' in a situation requiring logical engineering principle minded employees.

Neglect
In recent years, there have been many news articles written concerning the type of course being read at university and that there have been great numbers of people reading and studying arts degrees and that the maths and sciences have been grossly neglected. This is true and the consequences of this are now coming to fruition as there are a relatively low number of engineering graduates out there but a great new need for them. This is excellent news if you're into your engineering in a big way. The situation is changing though and the news of neglected science has been overtaken in recent years by the story that the numbers of students opting for maths and sciences have been growing year on year. This could be a reaction to the new government fees for university of £9000 a year. The students could be looking for more value for money and better value in the way of a nearly 9 - 5 teaching day as opposed to 9 or 5 teaching hours a week. There are lots of trends that can be picked out of recent graduate unemployment numbers and new student discipline preferences but one thing's for sure: the neglect of science in favour of arts is being reversed as students look for a strong set of skills with which to start their careers.

Pushing Economy Further

New technology to increase the fuel efficiency of fossil fuelled vehicles is coming onto the market all the time. The idea is to either tinker with the engine so one can produce a less thirsty engine or reduce the drag coefficient of the vehicle (making the vehicle body more aerodynamic so it slips through the air with less resistance). This is the approach of the car manufacturers to the new EU legislation which requires all car manufacturers to have an average emission from their range of vehicles of 130g CO2 / km or less (130 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kilometre or less). There are many technologies already on the market as part of new cars but there are some more subtle technologies seeking to push the economy to the limit.

Already Present
Some excellent examples of this new and emergy branch of automotive engineering are the aerodynamic enhancements made by Ford to their new breed of vehicles. http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=34312 This article shows how the designers and engineers put their cars in the wind tunnel and test for drag and they work to minimise this. An excellent product of this process is the active shutting grille. At high speeds, motors at the front of the car shut the grille fins forming an air dam. This minimises air drag off the front of the car and this kind of technology is used all the time by hypermilers wishing to increase fuel economy by crazy amounts: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/effects-air-dam-ford-f350-pickup-3171.html

Another passive technology is the sculpting of the bodywork of the new vehicles to reduce disrupted airflow over the vehicle: http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/#/new/car-range

Start, stop, restart
A technology usually reserved for the higher end luxury models is the start-stop technology which involves an on board computer shutting down the engine when the car comes to a stop then starting it up again when the accelerator pedal is depressed when the lights change. This saves fuel by simply turning the engine off and this technique can be utilised by every vehicle when a lengthy stop at the traffic lights is on the cards.

A look to the future
New exhaust technology being pioneered at the Universities of Cardiff and Birmingham intends to further increase the fuel economy of vehicles by injecting fuel into a conversion unit in the exhaust, allowing it to react using the heat of the exhaust gases and then passing it through the engine. This is a more efficient way to use fuel as it converts simple diesel or petrol into carbon monoxide and molecular hydrogen which are better fuels than simple hydrocarbons. It is a 'green' approach too as it utilises the waste heat of the engine to drive the chemical reaction of conversion of the fuel. The average gains from preliminary testing are suggested to be around an extra 10% mileage with diesel engines and 20% with petrol engines. The lead scientist for this process, Stan Golunski, has been working on the concept for more than 10 years and expects the techology to be perfected and on the road before 2020. http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/on-board-fuel-reforming-could-enhance-vehicle-efficiency/1005487.article

Advances in Engineering

This is a picture of the new 480 meter long vessel
due to be comissioned by the Dutch petrochemical company Shell. It will be a floating natural gas extraction, refining and storage facility. It has been designed to meet the needs of today's natural gas market.

Distance
As we have heard over and over in recent history, the earth's oil and gas are running out and as a result, more extreme enviroments must be braved to unearth the natural resources we need. This new vessel will be the first giant development to that end. The vessel, as yet unnamed, will be moored 200 miles from the northern coast of Australia to harvest gas from a natural gas field in that area. The vessel overcomes the need for pipes to be laid on the seabed. This is important because being 200 miles away from land, the gas cannot be tapped and recovered through seabed pipes. It also gives a nod to sustainable, reusable, mobile infrastructure as once the gas in the field is depleted, the huge vessel can be towed to the next field for exploitation.

Shipping and transport
The vessel, once moored, will spend 25 years working on the one field, in the same place, in open sea. This means that it needs to withstand massive storms and the gas needs to be transported to the mainland. The vessel has been designed to withstand the most ferocious of storms and the vessel's gas storage tanks are used to fill empty sea-going LNG tankers which will transport the gas to nearby China, Australia, Japan and South Korea as it's expected main buyers. After the field is depleted, it will be refurbished then sent to work on another gas field to sustain supply to buyers. Shell expects 2-3 of these vessels to be built to order from Samsung Heavy Industries Shipyards in Japan

Race to the poles

Freezing temperatures, fatal falls through the ice, any body parts not covered by thick thermal clothing quickly, painfully, turning black. This isn't Captain Scott's race to the South pole, it's the reality of energy resource extraction. Energy companies are increasingly braving these dangerous conditions in the hope of realising the massive untapped potential for fossil fuels extraction.

Energy woes
In recent years, energy prices have been rising incredibly. This has been hurting many motorists at the pumps and families when their energy bill arrives in the post. This may seem like a general trend which is unavoidable and should be borne as another one of life's constants but the bigger picture is much more grim.

Volatility
Within the sphere of general fuel price rises, there are the ups and downs over monthly periods
due to wholesale gas / oil price rises and falls. This volatility is not due to supply and demand and there physically being more oil extracted from one day to the next but due to futures markets and speculation ( the selling of the oil produced in a country at a later date, at the price that it was at today). This allows traders to make short term gains on the highs and lows of oil prices. Oil and gas spot prices (price at any one time on the oil / gas market) are also affected by the news and industrial data concerning the performance of a well or the confidence of the market in a ability of a company to satisfy the demands of their energy consumers.

Conflict
A major factor in the price of energy on the market is the conflict and military activity in an area.
The recent conflicts in northern Africa (specifically Libya and Bahrain) are a prime example of what conflict and warring can do to the price of energy. Libya exports 2% of the world's oil. This may seem like a small amount in the big picture but when it was revealed that during the Gaddafi conflict that oil exports were stopped or seriously reduced, the oil price shot up as there was increased competition between the nations of the world for the oil that remained on the market at that time. It's no secret that the increased economic activity of China and India has created a greater demand for more fossil fuels at a time when their production is reaching an unavoidable plateau using traditional sources.

Innovation
To circumvent the problem of limited capacity and dwindling confirmed resources, energy companies have been looking in more and more extreme environments from which to extract the remaining oil from the earth. This search for the remaining pockets has led energy companies to the poles. A few years ago, there was a furore between the UK government and the
Argentinian government over the sovereignity of the Falkland Islands (Las Malvinas to the Argentines). The Falkland Islands are close to Antarctica. The same islands were fought over decades ago by the same countries but for different reasons. Now the reason is oil. After preliminary tests and drilling, it appears that there are oil reservoirs in earth under the sea in the territorial waters of the Falkland Isles. This means that the UK government can sell / lease the fields to private industry to generate income and energy. Not surprisingly, the Argentine government wanted in on the action as it has suffered from a collapsed economy in recent times.

A clear and present danger
This leads us from the South to the North pole, energy companies have been scouring the globe for easy energy deposits and the other major location for exploitation is the area around the North Pole and Northern Canada. There has been much made of the extraction of oil and gas from the tar sands of Canada and Alaska but more recently, the focus has been the drilling for oil in the waters around the North Pole and the resulting mini oil spills that result during the erection of the drilling rig and initial well tapping.

This has the potential to create an environmental catastrophe on the scale of the Gulf disaster of 2010 or the Exxon -Valdez disaster of Alaska not too long ago. History has many examples of oil drilling gone wrong but there is not a lot of scope for cleaning up a disaster on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon rig in an environment as raw and difficult to work in as the icy Northern wastes.

The future is uncertain
As energy prices go up, more work goes into trying to discover more sources of fossil fuels to help bring the price of energy down. The sporadic, desparate nature of new oil discovery will mean that in the near to mid future, black-outs and times of limited electricity supply will become the norm. To avoid this embarrasing situation, more and more money will be diverted to helping solve the supply problem. This will, as it does now, often involves oil companies aggresively lobbying governments to pass legislation to permit more drilling in the previously off-limits areas, this sort of activity looks set to contine. Don't be surprised if, as a result of desparate attempts to obtain more fuel, we see more animals coated in oil on our TV screens and blighted oil-slick seas.