Impact of emulsification of crude oil on normalized radar cross section

Abstract

The emulsification of crude oil is caused by the oil flowing into the water, resulting in the increase of oil film tension, viscosity, water content, and volume, which brings great harm to the marine ecological environment and difficulties for the cleanup of marine emergency equipment. The realization observation of emulsification crude oil will increase the response speed of marine emergency response. Therefore, we set up crude oil emulsification samples to study the physical property in laboratory and conducted radar measurements at different incidence angles in outdoor. The radar is C band in resolution of 0.7 m by 0.7 m. A fully polarimetric scatterometer (HH, VV, and VH/HV) is mounted at 1.66 m (minimum altitude) height at an incidence angle between 35° and 60°. An asphalt content of less than 3% crude oil and the filtered seawater were used to the outdoor emulsification scattering experiment. The measurement results are as follows. The water content can be used to describe the process of emulsification and it is easy to measure. Wind speed, asphalt content, seawater temperature, and photo-oxidation affect the emulsifying process of crude oil, and affects the normalized radar cross section (NRCS) of oil film but wind is not the dominant factor. It is the first time to find that the emulsification of crude oil results in an increase of NRCS.