Analysis of effectiveness of oil spill recovery using disc-type oil skimmer at laboratory scale

Abstract

During the past 40 years, there have been 14 major accidents of oil spill in Indonesia, mostly as results of ship collisions. There are several methods in handling oil spill accident, in which the most effective methods are using mechanical oil skimmer with disc plate. The effectiveness of the oil skimmer on handling oil spills is influenced by various factors, such as the depth of the disk submerged or the disk surface area dipped into the oil spill, the area of the wiper sweep, the thickness of the oil on the disk surface, and the rotation speed of the disk. This paper presents the results of laboratory scale experiment of mechanical oil skimmer. The oil samples used are diesel engine oil with 15W-40 SAE and the water sample used is sea water. The experiment was conducted with variation of 27 mm and 55 mm of disc submersion depth or equal to dipped surface area of 31.35 cm2 and 88,832 cm2. The duration of the test for 3 data is 5 minutes. Based on theoretical calculations, the increase of rotation speed of the disk, the result of spill transport will also be higher. This is proved by the experimental results. The lifting process of oil spill is more effective with low rotation speed, because the result of oil spill transported will be more dominated by oil than water. In this test, the higher the rotation speed of the disk, the higher the water produced.