The Impact of an Oil Spill in Turbulent Waters

The Impact of an Oil Spill in Turbulent Waters
Author: John Murray Davies
Publisher: Stationery Office Books (TSO)
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1997
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

On 5 January 1993 the Braer oil tanker ran aground on Garths Ness in South Shetland in some of the worst weather conditions ever recorded there. Over a period of up to 12 days the entire cargo, 84,700 tons of light Gulfaks crude oil, was discharged at an unknown rate into the turbulent sea. It has been estimated that up to 1500 tons of heavy bunker oil was also lost.

Oil in the Sea III

Oil in the Sea III
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003-03-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309084385

Since the early 1970s, experts have recognized that petroleum pollutants were being discharged in marine waters worldwide, from oil spills, vessel operations, and land-based sources. Public attention to oil spills has forced improvements. Still, a considerable amount of oil is discharged yearly into sensitive coastal environments. Oil in the Sea provides the best available estimate of oil pollutant discharge into marine waters, including an evaluation of the methods for assessing petroleum load and a discussion about the concerns these loads represent. Featuring close-up looks at the Exxon Valdez spill and other notable events, the book identifies important research questions and makes recommendations for better analysis ofâ€"and more effective measures againstâ€"pollutant discharge. The book discusses: Inputâ€"where the discharges come from, including the role of two-stroke engines used on recreational craft. Behavior or fateâ€"how oil is affected by processes such as evaporation as it moves through the marine environment. Effectsâ€"what we know about the effects of petroleum hydrocarbons on marine organisms and ecosystems. Providing a needed update on a problem of international importance, this book will be of interest to energy policy makers, industry officials and managers, engineers and researchers, and advocates for the marine environment.

Responding to Oil Spills in the U.S. Arctic Marine Environment

Responding to Oil Spills in the U.S. Arctic Marine Environment
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2014-08-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 030929889X

U.S. Arctic waters north of the Bering Strait and west of the Canadian border encompass a vast area that is usually ice covered for much of the year, but is increasingly experiencing longer periods and larger areas of open water due to climate change. Sparsely inhabited with a wide variety of ecosystems found nowhere else, this region is vulnerable to damage from human activities. As oil and gas, shipping, and tourism activities increase, the possibilities of an oil spill also increase. How can we best prepare to respond to such an event in this challenging environment? Responding to Oil Spills in the U.S. Arctic Marine Environment reviews the current state of the science regarding oil spill response and environmental assessment in the Arctic region north of the Bering Strait, with emphasis on the potential impacts in U.S. waters. This report describes the unique ecosystems and environment of the Arctic and makes recommendations to provide an effective response effort in these challenging conditions. According to Responding to Oil Spills in the U.S. Arctic Marine Environment, a full range of proven oil spill response technologies is needed in order to minimize the impacts on people and sensitive ecosystems. This report identifies key oil spill research priorities, critical data and monitoring needs, mitigation strategies, and important operational and logistical issues. The Arctic acts as an integrating, regulating, and mediating component of the physical, atmospheric and cryospheric systems that govern life on Earth. Not only does the Arctic serve as regulator of many of the Earth's large-scale systems and processes, but it is also an area where choices made have substantial impact on life and choices everywhere on planet Earth. This report's recommendations will assist environmentalists, industry, state and local policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of this special region to preserve and protect it from damaging oil spills.

Petroleum Spills in the Marine Environment

Petroleum Spills in the Marine Environment
Author: James R. Payne
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1351092383

This book covers research completed between 1981 and May 1985 and includes: reviews of recent studies, sitings and investigations at spills-of-opportunity as well as results of recent arctic and sub-Arctic oil weathering experiments and observations on the behavior of crude oil in the presence of ice. Topics covered include the following: laboratory studies of formation and stability of water-in-oil emulsions; selected case histories of the more detailed chemistry studies of mousse behavior and long term fate in near-coastal and open ocean oil spills/blowouts; tar ball formation and distribution; and algorithms and computer programs to simulate the formation of water-in-oil emulsion.

Deep Oil Spills

Deep Oil Spills
Author: Steven A. Murawski
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 611
Release: 2019-06-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030116050

The demand for oil and gas has brought exploration and production to unprecedented depths of the world’s oceans. Currently, over 50% of the oil from the Gulf of Mexico now comes from waters in excess of 1,500 meters (one mile) deep, where no oil was produced just 20 years ago. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill blowout did much to change the perception of oil spills as coming just from tanker accidents, train derailments, and pipeline ruptures. In fact, beginning with the Ixtoc 1 spill off Campeche, Mexico in 1979-1980, there have been a series of large spill events originating at the sea bottom and creating a myriad of new environmental and well control challenges. This volume explores the physics, chemistry, sub-surface oil deposition and environmental impacts of deep oil spills. Key lessons learned from the responses to previous deep spills, as well as unresolved scientific questions for additional research are highlighted, all of which are appropriate for governmental regulators, politicians, industry decision-makers, first responders, researchers and students wanting an incisive overview of issues surrounding deep-water oil and gas production.

The Effect of Oil Spills on Seafood Safety

The Effect of Oil Spills on Seafood Safety
Author:
Publisher: Nordic Council of Ministers
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2004
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9289310561

This publication examines the effect of oil spills at sea on seafood safety and sets out a model for a stepwise risk analysis procedure for risk monitoring and management of contamination (focusing on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAH components in the oil and on seafood safety) from an imaginary oil spill at a location in the sea between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The report also summarises recommendations for national and international emergency response and surveillance systems and for the future research needs in this topic.

Oil Spill Dispersants

Oil Spill Dispersants
Author: Committee on Understanding Oil Spill Dispersants: Efficacy and Effects
Publisher:
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2005
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

Approximately 3 million gallons of oil or refined petroleum products are spilled into U.S. waters every year. Oil dispersants (chemical agents such as surfactants, solvents, and other compounds) are used to reduce the effect of oil spills by changing the chemical and physical properties of the oil. By enhancing the amount of oil that physically mixes into the water, dispersants can reduce the potential that a surface slick will contaminate shoreline habitats. Although called for in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 as a tool for minimizing the impact of oil spills, the use of chemical dispersants has long been controversial. This book reviews the adequacy of existing information and ongoing research regarding the effectiveness of dispersants as an oil spill response technique, as well as the effect of dispersed oil on marine and coastal ecosystems. Oil Spill Dispersants also includes recommended steps for policy makers faced with making hard choices regarding the use of dispersants as part of spill contingency planning efforts or during actual spills.

The Characteristics and Modelling of Oil Dispersion in the Ocean Mixed Layer from Underwater Blowout Spill Accidents

The Characteristics and Modelling of Oil Dispersion in the Ocean Mixed Layer from Underwater Blowout Spill Accidents
Author: Bicheng Chen
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

Underwater oil spill accidents are the most challenging oil spills in the ocean and the ensuing oil transport is impacted by a wide range of physical, chemical and biological processes through the entire ocean column. In particular, the final fate of oil plume is strongly affected by the various scales of motions present in the ocean mixed layer (OML) (i.e. Ekman transport, submesoscale/mesoscale eddies, small-scale turbulence).Due to the large extension of oil plumes, the numerical prediction of oil trasnport is most often investigated by regional models, which requires turbulence models for the OML. In these models of OML, turbulence and mixing have been developed based on knowledge of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) turbulence, because of the similarity between these two boundary layers and the lack of observation and understanding about the OML.Recent studies have found that the unique wave-induced phenomena (i.e. Stokes drift, Langmuir circulatons) in OML are critical for both horizontal advection and vertical mixing in the OML, but important issues related to oil transport remain unsolved. In this work, we focus on i) the modulation of turbulence field by surface gravity waves in the OML and responses of oil plumes to this modulation using the high fidelity large eddy simulation (LES); ii) a new multi-scale numerical approach to inlcude both accurate representations of small-scale turbulence and large-scale eddies; and iii) impacts of dispersant application on oil plume from an underwater blowout and the corresponding implication for remediation.The surface gravity wave induces two phenomena--the Stokes drift and the Langmuir circulation, which are important for transport processes in the OML. Both phenomena are modulated by the misalignment angle between wind and wave. In the first work, we focus on the effects of swell waves on the modulation of turbulent flow in the OML and its impact on oil transport. Results show that when the wind-swell misalignment is small, Langmuir cells develop and significantly enhance the vertical mixing of the oil plume. Conversely, when the misalignment is large, vertical dilution is suppressed when compared to the no-swell case. Due to the strong directional shear of the mean flow within the OML, plume depth significantly impacts the mean transport direction. The size of oil droplets in the plume also plays an important role in vertical mixing and mean transport direction. Oil plumes being transported in the OML experience the action of shear-generated turbulence, Langmuir circulations, Ekman transport and submesoscale/mesoscale eddies. To resolve such turbulent processes, grid sizes of a few meters are desirable while horizontal domain sizes of LES are typically restricted from hundreds of meters to a few kilometers, for LES to remain practically affordable. Yet transported oil plumes evolve to large scales extending to tens or even hundreds of kilometers. In this work, the Extended Nonperiodic Domain LES for Scalar transport (ENDLESS) is proposed as a multi-scale approach to tackle this challenge while being computationally affordable. The basic idea is to simulate the shear turbulence and Langmuir circulations on a small horizontal domain with periodic boundary conditions while the resulting transport velocity field is replicated periodically following adaptively the large-scale plume as it evolves spatially towards much larger scales. This approach also permits the superposition of larger-scale quasi two-dimensional flow motions on the oil advection, allowing for coupling with regional circulation models.A validation case and two sample applications to oil plume evolution in the OML are presented in order to demonstrate key features and computational speedup associated with the ENDLESS method. The results shows that the ENDLESS method is a promising multi-scale approach.The application of oil dispersants in oil spill accidents is controversial due to the unclear effects on oil transport in a real environment and their toxicity to oceanic organisms. Because of the velocity shear in Ekman layer, the oil experiences different advection velocity in different depth, therefore, the vertical transport also impact the horizontal transport of oil. In this study, the oil transport of an idealized underwater blow-up accident is simulated by LES, which is able to resolve the high fidelity vertical mixing. The oil spill accident is simulated by two parts: i) the near-field simulation which includes the water column where the oil plume rises from the source; ii) the far-field simulation which the oil plume disperses mainly horizontally in the ocean mixed layer (OML) using the ENDLESS approach. The result from LES shows that after applying dispersants, the advection velocity of oil plume reduces to about 1/8 of its original value and the lateral diffusion is significantly enhanced.

Oil Spill Science and Technology

Oil Spill Science and Technology
Author: Mervin Fingas
Publisher: Gulf Professional Publishing
Total Pages: 1189
Release: 2010-12-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1856179443

The National Academy of Sciences estimate that 1.7 to 8.8 million tons of oil are released into world's water every year, of which more than 70% is directly related to human activities. The effects of these spills are all too apparent: dead wildlife, oil covered marshlands and contaminated water chief among them. This reference will provide scientists, engineers and practitioners with the latest methods use for identify and eliminating spills before they occur and develop the best available techniques, equipment and materials for dealing with oil spills in every environment. Topics covered include: spill dynamics and behaviour, spill treating agents, and cleanup techniques such as: in situ burning, mechanical containment or recovery, chemical and biological methods and physical methods are used to clean up shorelines. Also included are the fate and effects of oil spills and means to assess damage. Covers spill dynamics and behaviour Definitive guide to spill treating agents Complete coverage of cleanup techniques Includes fate and effects of oil spills and means to assess damage