Artificial islands

Artificial islands
What is a better symbolization of a manufactured landscape than an artificial islands? When you talk about artificial islands i guess that everybody would immediately think about the Palm island projects at Dubai. These are the biggest artifcial islands under construction in the world today. In total 4 big artificial island projects are going on here: The Palm Jumeirah island project (Check out the skyscrapercity thread ) ,the Palm Jebel Ali project (skyscrapercity thread ) , the Palm Deira project ( not visible in google maps yet ), and the amazing World Islands project.

(skyscrapercity thread). All these projects together can be seen in the picture below:



Similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai is the Al Bahrain artificial island project in Bahrain. The project consist of a series of 13 small man-made islands linked together to form 1 island. Totally it is covering an area of 20 million square meters:



In the northern part of Bahrein is another large artificial island. This is called Amwaj Island project. The Amwaj Islands was reclaimed from the relatively shallow seas to the northeast of Muharraq Island, which is the northernmost island in the Kingdom of Bahrain.The Islands contain residential, commercial (highrise) and hotel and retail buildings, as well as a 240 m diameter circular marina with over 140 berths:


When talking about the largest artificial island you have to be in the Netherlands. The Flevopolder, which was reclaimed on the Zuiderzee and was completed in 1968, is the biggest artificial island in the world:

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Busiest road bridges

Most of the busiest road bridges are located in metropolian areas where rivers devide them in two parts. These kind of bridges have to take a huge amount of traffic each day. The George Washington bridge, linking Manhattan to New Jersey, is the most heavily used bridge in the world, with a daily traffic of over 300,000 vehicles:

When also taking in acount the amount of pedestrians using the bridge the Howrah bridge in Kolkota is the busiest bridge crossing in the world. It connects the east and the west part of this city with 15 million inhabitants. It successfully bears the weight of a daily traffic of approximately 150,000 vehicles and an unbelievable amount of 4,000,000 pedestrians:

The Oakland bay bridge in san Fransisco which is the main traffic road bewteen east and west San Fransisco is also among the busiest bridge crossings in the world. It carries approximately 270,000 vehicles per day:

In Europe the busiest bridge is the Bosphoros bridge in Istanbul. This bridge is connecting the Asian part of Istanbul with the European part. Nowadays, around 180,000 vehicles pass daily in both directions, almost 85% being automobiles:

Other bridges which are also considered one of he busiest in europe are the Kingston bridge in Glasgow in Scotland (It is carrying around 150,000 vehicles every day), and the Van Brienenoord bridge in Rotterdam in the Netherlands with over 250,000 vehicles every day.

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Oil refineries

Oil refinery:
Raw or unprocessed crude oil is not generally useful in its raw or unprocessed form, as it comes out of the ground. To make this crude oil a useful material it needs processed at an oil refinery. There it is refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas. Crude contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together. You have to separate the different types of hydrocarbons to have anything useful. Fortunately there is an easy way to separate things, and this is with the use of a distillation tower. The process to make all the different types of materials is shown below:



The biggest oil refineries:
The biggest oil refinery in the world is the SK Corp Uslan Refinery in Uslan ( Soutk Korea ) With an production of 880.000 bpd (Bottles per day ). Reliance Petroleum Jamnagar refinery in India with a current production: 660.000 bpd is the second biggets oil refinery in the world. But the future production will be 1.240.000 bpd, which will make it the biggest in the world. In the picture below you can see the gate to the complex with the refinery in the background:


South Koreas has another big oil refinery. This one is called the LG-Caltex Yosu refinery with an production of 650.000 bpd. The fourth biggest oil refinery is a refinery of Exxon Mobile ( The biggest oil producer in the world ). This Exxon mobil refining is situated on an island in Singapore and has an production of 605.000 bpd:


The Exxon mobil Kawasaki refinery in Tokio is another big one of Exxon Mible with a production of 592.000 bpd. Other major oil refineries in the world are the PDVSA Amuay refinery in Venezuela with 580.000 bpd, the Exxonmobil Baytown Refinery, in Texas, USA with a production of 557.000 bpd:

The Exxon Mobile Baton Rouge refinery in the USA with 493.500 bpd.




The Shell Eastern Petroleum Singapore Pulau Bukom refinery, with a capacity of 458.00 bpd, and Shell Pernis in The Netherlands with a production of 412.000 bpd.

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