Detection of Oil within the Water Column

Abstract

ABSTRACT Current technology makes it difficult to detect and locate oil in the water column and make timely decisions to prevent significant ecological and economic damages. There is a very short timeframe between the start of an oil spill and for the responders to make decisions to protect the environment, numerous water-intakes and commercial facilities located along the shorelines or rivers. Therefore, data needs to be gathered from subsurface detection systems in an accurate and timely manner. However, challenges in detecting oil within the water column include poor visibility in deeper waters, difficulty in tracking oil movements in fast-moving currents and current technological limitations to finding trace amount of oil or dispersed oil at any depth. This paper captures the planning process, technological descriptions and prototype tests performed at Ohmsett. In November 2011, the Coast Guard Research and Development Center started a multi-year effort to come up with a detection and mitigation system for oil in the water column. The first phase was the design concept for a detection system with 18 goals to be met, including acquiring data in real time (less than one hour), calibrating easily for different types of oil and dispersed oil and working in currents or tow speeds up to 5 knots. Technologies include a multi-beam sonar, a flow-through multichannel fluorometer and a wide-angle scattering that measures the refractive indexes of particles. The second phase is currently underway and focuses on the development and testing of prototype systems. The multi-beam sonar and wide-angle scattering prototypes were tested at Ohmsett in December 2013 but quantitative test results are not yet included as they are still being analyzed at the Research and Development Center. Future plans include design concepts and prototype developments of mitigation systems.