Offshore Oil Spill Research Articles

Durable super-hydrophobic PDMS@SiO2@WS2 sponge for efficient oil/water separation in complex marine environment

The robust and eco-friendly super-hydrophobic sponge with remarkable performances has been potential adsorption material for the treatment of offshore oil spills. In this work, the durable PDMS@SiO2@WS2 sponge was fabricated via a green and facile one-step dipping method. The mixed tungsten disulfide (WS2) microparticles and hydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles were immobilized on the sponge by non-toxic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) glue tier, which featured the hierarchical structure and extreme water repellency with the water contact angle of 158.8±1.4°. The obtained PDMS@SiO2@WS2 sponge exhibits high oil adsorption capacity with 12-112 times of its own weight, and oil/water selectivity with separation efficiency over 99.85%. Notably, when subjected to the complex marine environment including high temperature, corrosive condition, insolation, and strong wind and waves, the modified sponge can maintain sable super-hydrophobicity with water contact angle over 150°. Moreover, it possesses superior mechanical stability for sustainable reusability and oil recovery. The sponge fabricated by non-toxic modifiers along with its sable super-hydrophobicity in complex marine environment makes it a potential material for practical applications.

Superhydrophobic Copper Foam Modified with n-Dodecyl Mercaptan-CeO2 Nanosheets for Efficient Oil/Water Separation and Oil Spill Cleanup

Efficient separation of oil/water with a simple and low-cost method is of great importance for the treatment of oily wastewater. In the current study, a facile one-step electrodeposition method was used to fabricate highly dense CeO₂ nanostructures on copper foam at a constant current density of 1.5 mA·cm–² for 20 min, which exhibited excellent superhydrophobicity and superlipophilicity after surface modification with n-dodecyl mercaptan (NDM). The electrodeposition current density and time were systematically investigated to uncover influencing factors of the growth process of CeO₂ nanostructures on the copper foam. The as-fabricated superhydrophobic foams could not only be used to efficiently separate oil/water mixtures with a separation efficiency greater than 97.4% but also presented robustness and high stability against 3.5 wt % NaCl solution and 600-grit sandpaper abrasion. Furthermore, the as-prepared sample still maintains a high separation efficiency at circa 97.5% after more than 25 times of recovery for kerosene/water mixture separation. In addition, the as-prepared three-dimensional cassette structure made of superhydrophobic copper foam could float freely on the water surface for fast in situ collection of oil from the water surface, indicating application potential in offshore oil spill treatment and cleanup.

Flexible TiO2 nanograss array film decorated with BiOI nanoflakes and its greatly boosted photocatalytic activity

A flexible TiO2 nanograss array film on Ti wire mesh was prepared by a mild chemical reaction. To overcome its shortcoming of almost no absorption of visible light, successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) was executed to decorate the prepared TiO2 film with BiOI. The results of XRD and SEM measurements showed that BiOI nanoflakes formed on the surface of TiO2 film, and the loading amounts of BiOI nanoflakes increased with the increase in SILAR cycles. The XPS results confirmed the heterojunction formation of BiOI-TiO2. The photocurrent measurement suggests that a moderate loading amount of BiOI nanoflakes is beneficial to improve the charge separation efficiency, which is ascribed to the heterojunction formation of BiOI-TiO2. The BiOI-decorated TiO2 film with SILAR cycles of seven showed the most excellent visible-light photocatalytic activity among all the samples. Compared with the bareTiO2 nanograss array film, its visible-light photocatalytic activity increased by 11.7 times. The flexible BiOI-decorated TiO2 nanograss array film with high photocatalytic activity shows great applications in air pollution and the pollution caused by offshore oil spills.

Implementing Bayesian networks for ISO 31000:2018-based maritime oil spill risk management: State-of-art, implementation benefits and challenges, and future research directions

The risk of a large-scale oil spill remains significant in marine environments as international maritime transport continues to grow. The environmental as well as the socio-economic impacts of a large-scale oil spill could be substantial. Oil spill models and modeling tools for Pollution Preparedness and Response (PPR) can support effective risk management. However, there is a lack of integrated approaches that consider oil spill risks comprehensively, learn from all information sources, and treat the system uncertainties in an explicit manner. Recently, the use of the international ISO 31000:2018 risk management framework has been suggested as a suitable basis for supporting oil spill PPR risk management. Bayesian networks (BNs) are graphical models that express uncertainty in a probabilistic form and can thus support decision-making processes when risks are complex and data are scarce. While BNs have increasingly been used for oil spill risk assessment (OSRA) for PPR, no link between the BNs literature and the ISO 31000:2018 framework has previously been made. This study explores how Bayesian risk models can be aligned with the ISO 31000:2018 framework by offering a flexible approach to integrate various sources of probabilistic knowledge. In order to gain insight in the current utilization of BNs for oil spill risk assessment and management (OSRA-BNs) for maritime oil spill preparedness and response, a literature review was performed. The review focused on articles presenting BN models that analyze the occurrence of oil spills, consequence mitigation in terms of offshore and shoreline oil spill response, and impacts of spills on the variables of interest. Based on the results, the study discusses the benefits of applying BNs to the ISO 31000:2018 framework as well as the challenges and further research needs.

Oil Spill Simulation and Analysis of Its Behavior Under the Effect of Weathering and Chemical Dispersant: a Case Study of the Bacia de Campos—Brazil

Offshore oil spills are a critical form of marine pollution, requiring researchers to mitigate their impacts. In this sense, this paper contributes to a better understanding of oil behavior after spillage and the improvement of contingency measures. Using Bacia de Campos as the study area, which accounts for approximately 32% of daily oil and gas production in Brazil, information regarding the properties of light, medium, and heavy oils, seawater, wind and wave weather conditions, and oil spill characteristics was used to perform simulations to identify the percentage of oil remaining after the offshore spill and the effectiveness of the chemical dispersant in dispersing this oil. The results show that after the weathering simulation, on average, 55% of the spilled oil remains at sea in dispersed and remaining form and that the use of chemical dispersant under the conditions defined in this study did not result in significant oil removal.

Prewetting Polypropylene-Wood Pulp Fiber Composite Nonwoven Fabric for Oil–Water Separation

The removal of oil from the water surface is vital to protect the environment and living organisms against the threats posed by industrial oily wastewater and offshore oil spills. High cost, low efficiency, and environmental pollution limit the widespread use of the commercial methods of oil-water separation. In this study, the prewetting polypropylene-wood pulp fiber composite nonwoven fabric (PWNF) has been used in the gravity-driven separation of the oil-water mixture. The prewetting PWNF displayed superior underwater oleophobic properties, and the underwater kerosene contact angle was 137.65° ± 4.27°. The oil-water interfacial tension in the microchannels among the PWNF fibers prevented the oil from passing through the microchannels; however, it allowed the passage of water. The PWNF membrane maintained an excellent oil-water separation performance after repeated separation and long-term soaking cycles. The separation membrane maintained 75% and 50% of the initial separation performance after 40 repeat cycles and water immersion for more than 20 days, respectively. The separation rate of the PWNF membrane was also investigated as a function of salt solution concentration, temperature, and pH. Meanwhile, the influences of prewetting time, prewetting temperature, and different dyeing condition of the mixture on the separation rate were clarified. The destruction of the oil-water contact interface was suggested as the main failure mode of the developed PWNF separation membrane. The maximum kerosene height that the PWNF separation membrane could sustain was 800 mm. The obtained results confirmed that the PWNF separation membrane exhibited the high potential of widespread use in various environments for achieving efficient and stable separations, especially for the oily wastewater treatment.

A superwettable functionalized-fabric with pH-sensitivity for controlled oil/water, organic solvents separation, and selective oil collection from water-rich system

Recently, in consideration of environmental pollution and serious impact on human health caused by the frequent occurrence of oily wastewater and oil leakage accidents, a multifunctional superwetting material is urgently desired to solve this issue. Therefore, in this article, a simple, moderate, and environmentally friendly strategy has been developed by polymerizing in situ growth of the fabric and adding two kinds of micro-nanoparticles such as silica and magnesium oxide that can improve the roughness. The synergy makes it possible to fabricate a pH-sensitive multifunctional fabric integrated with controllable wettability, good mechanical durability as well as outstanding reusability. Based on such fabric with a variety of outstanding properties, it can be utilized to separate various oil-water mixtures. For instance, two separation devices (vertical-type and T-type) have been designed to successfully separate diverse oil/water mixtures by gravity driving and wettability change, showing high permeation flux and excellent separation efficiency. Meanwhile, it can also preserve the ability to separate in situ rapidly multiple oil/water/oil mixtures. More importantly, by right of as-prepared superwetting fabric, a device that can not only capture oil slicks on the water surface, but also capture oil under the water has been designed with splendid separation efficiency, providing a new design idea for the offshore oil spills. Moreover, it is amusing that the obtained superwetting fabric is capable of separating immiscible organic solvents. Impressively, the obtained fabric also preserves the capacity in separating in situ phenol from mixed organic system through chemical reaction. Consequently, in view of the diversified characters and wide application of the resulted fabric, it has an extensive application prospect in diverse industries, especially in the oil-water separation.

Microwave-assisted preparation of two-dimensional amphiphilic nanoplate herding surfactants for offshore oil spill treatment

Oil spills are the uncontrolled release of liquid hydrocarbon by ruptured pipelines and tanker hulls, or blowouts and leaks from offshore storage facilities and drilling rigs, either by faulty human behaviors or inevitable natural aging processes. Spills cause disastrous environmental and economic consequences, with the effects of marine habitat damage for lasting decades, necessitating a critical need for efficient oil spill mitigation and leakage treatment. In this study, we develop a two-dimensional (2D) amphiphilic nanoplate as the herding surfactant for retracting spilled oil offshore on the seawater surface with various temperature and saline concentrations. Applying 2D nanoplate herding surfactant causes areas of thin oil slick floating on water to largely shrink and form a thick bulk layer. This transformation lays the foundation for the next-step oil treatment and recovery. Microwave-assisted synthesis method was used to fabricate the surface-modified zirconium phosphate (ZrP) nanoplates as the oil herder, which has an amphiphilic characteristic, containing both hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties. The 2D nanoplate surfactants decrease the air-water surface tension to facilitate the oil herding process efficiently. Using this herding procedure, we propose a biocompatible, high herding efficiency and cost-effective 2D herding surfactant fabrication method and offer a new direction for oil treatment in the offshore process safety field.

Death by a thousand spills: How corporate branding and media strategies downplay the risk of offshore oil spills in Canada

On 15 November 2018, Newfoundland experienced its largest oil spill. The disaster saw the SeaRose platform disperse 250,000 litres of oil into the Atlantic. Despite the accident’s unprecedented nature, Husky Energy (the company responsible for the spill) minimized the public’s perception of potential ecological risks by transforming the disaster into an everyday fact of life. Focusing on Husky’s mediation of the spill, this article shows how Husky’s visual representation of small offshore spills erases their actual impact as cumulative environmental hazards. The regularity of ‘minor’ oil spills, I argue, forms a category of chronic disasters obscured by an ‘emergency frame’ that defines ecological catastrophes as acute, traumatic and exceptional. Unlike eruptive and explosive spills, Husky visualized the SeaRose spill as a benign event, drawing attention away from the ongoing and incremental nature of oil pollution. In this way, Husky’s representation of the spill produced more public relief than alarm.

Marine Oil Spill Control Based on Discrete Mathematical Model

Liu, Y., 2020. Marine oil spill control based on discrete mathematical model. In: Yang, Y.; Mi, C.; Zhao, L., and Lam, S.(eds.), Global Topics and New Trends in Coastal Research: Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 103, pp. 387–391. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Marine oil spill has caused great environmental pollution. Therefore, the analysis of marine oil spill control based on discrete mathematics is studied. Based on the complex situation at sea, an on line monitoring and control system for offshore oil spill including an oil spill online monitoring subsystem and an oil spill integration subsystem is designed. The on-line monitoring subsystem of the oil spill establishes the land data center by the integration technology, uses the data center to monitor the pollution accidents such as oil spill and the like of the offshore oil platform, analyzes the multi-source monitoring data returned by the processing and reports the monitoring and early warning information, and expands the multi-source data receiving processing and the visual display. The main system uses the current loop discrete control model to design the PWM rectifier control module, the real-time dynamic visualization module based on the “oil particle” model, and the interactive fence distribution control based on the triangle partition algorithm to realize the oil spill control. Experiments show that the system could effectively monitor the oil spill on the sea surface, simulate the marine oil spill movement process under complex environmental conditions, and have a good step response.

A Visual Analytics System for Oil Spill Response and Recovery

Extensive research has been done on oil spill simulation techniques, spatial optimization models, and oil spill cleanup strategies. This article presents a visual analytics system that integrates the independent facets of spill modeling techniques and spatial optimization to enable inspection, exploration, and decision making for offshore oil spill response.

Analysis of Offshore Oil Spill Pollution Treatment Technology

In recent years, human demand for petroleum resources has been increasing, the exploitation, transportation, and use of offshore oil have also led to frequent offshore oil spills pollution accidents. Once an oil spills accident at sea occurs, it will not only cause waste of petroleum resources and produce economic loss, but also cause great damage to the marine ecological environment. This article reviews the hazards of offshore oil spills pollution, the ways of oil spills, the physical, chemical, and biological treatment technologies of oil spills and gives the prospect.

Decreasing and Migration Process of Oil Spill at Sea

Based on the survey data of Jiaozhou Bay in May, August and October 1992, the migration and variation of PHC content in offshore oil spill in Jiaozhou Bay were studied. In August, Station 2106 at the eastern central Point of Jiaozhou Bay was taken as the source of offshore oil spill, and its PHC content was 0.056 mg/L. A series of concentric circles with different gradients formed around there, and there was a descended distribution trend from the center to the periphery along the gradient. The content of PHC decreased from 0.056 mg/L at the center to 0.024 mg/L in the central water, 0.027 mg/L in the northwest water, 0.041 mg/L in the northeast water and 0.048 mg/L in the southeast water. According to the horizontal absolute loss velocity model of material content, it was calculated that the horizontal absolute loss velocity of PHC content in the surface waters from the eastern central water to the central water of eastern Jiaozhou Bay in August was 0.45 Yang Dongfang absolute number, and it decreased to 0.42 in the northwest water, 0.36 in the northeast water, and 0.29 in the southeast water. According to the horizontal relative loss velocity model of material content, it was calculated that the horizontal relative loss velocity of PHC content in the surface waters from the eastern central water to the central water of eastern Jiaozhou Bay in August was 8.03 Yang Dongfang absolute number, and it decreased to 7.50 in the northwest water, 6.42 in the northeast water, and 5.17 in the southeast water. Therefore, with Station 2106 in the eastern central Point of Jiaozhou Bay as the source of offshore oil spill, there was a descended PHC content distribution trend from the center to the periphery with the horizontal absolute loss velocity of 0.29-0.45 Yang Dongfang absolute number and the horizontal relative loss velocity of 5.17-8.03 Yang Dongfang relative number. The rising PHC content distribution was consistent with that of the horizontal absolute (relative) loss velocity of PHC content: that of the central water < that of the northwest water < that of the northeast water <that of the southeast water. PHC content indicates the variation amount from the source to certain water, namely terminal value. The horizontal absolute (relative) loss velocity of PHC content indicates the variation process from the source to certain water, namely process value. This reveals that both the terminal value and the process value of PHC content present the migration process of PHC content in waterbody. According to the horizontal velocity model of Yang Dongfang material content, the decreasing and migration process of PHC content toward the periphery along the gradient can be calculated and quantified.

Post-Macondo Focus on Safety

Editor’s Note: The oil and gas industry is under public scrutiny like never before on a host of health, safety, and environmental issues. These concerns are already affecting how companies operate and interact with the public. This series is intended to shed light on how the industry is actively confronting these challenges and how it should address them going forward. Ten years ago, on 20 April 2010, the oil and gas industry suffered a significant human and environmental catastrophe, and a major blow to its reputation. The Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible drilling rig was preparing to temporarily abandon the Macondo well in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) when the well blew and ignited causing a massive explosion that killed 11 people. The incident resulted in an oil spill of 4 to 5 million bbl (the biggest offshore oil spill in US history) and a cost to the operator (BP) in the order of $60 billion. This seminal event in the history of the industry caused a moratorium on drilling in the GOM which could have been extended indefinitely but for a comprehensive response by the industry to convince the regulators that the industry could operate safely. Immediately following the incident, the US oil and gas industry assembled four Joint Industry Task Forces (JITFs) to focus on critical areas of GOM activity (American Petroleum Institute, www.api.org); President Obama established a national commission to provide an analysis of the incident and make appropriate recommendations (National Commission on the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011); and the Secretary of the Interior requested the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to form a committee to examine probable causes and identify means to avoid future occurrences (National Academies Press 2011). This article outlines the status of two initiatives: (1) the current National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) program to enhance offshore safety; and (2) a new initiative by regulators and industry to improve the collection of safety data. The article concludes with a summary of the current focus areas to enhance offshore safety. The contribution of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) to some of these initiatives is described. It is important to note that although the incident occurred in US waters, the lessons learned are applicable to oil and gas operations worldwide, including land operations. The Gulf Research Program Part of the criminal settlement between the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and BP/Transocean was the establishment of an endowment fund of $500 million to be spent over 30 years to conduct science-based programs in three general areas of concern in the GOM and other continental shelf regions: (1) offshore energy system safety; (2) human health; and (3) environmental resources. The management of this fund was awarded to the NASEM, which established a program called “The Gulf Research Program” (GRP). NASEM was selected by the DOJ to administer the program because of its excellent reputation in organizing appropriate experts in the nation to provide advice on critical science and technology issues.

An integrated offshore oil spill response decision making approach by human factor analysis and fuzzy preference evaluation

Human factors/errors (such as inappropriate actions by operators and unsafe supervision by organizations) are a primary cause of oil spill incidents. To investigate the influences of active operational failures and unsafe latent factors in offshore oil spill accidents, an integrated human factor analysis and decision support process has been developed. The system is comprised of a Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) framework to qualitatively evaluate the influence of various factors and errors associated with the multiple operational stages considered for oil spill preparedness and response (e.g., oil spill occurrence, spill monitoring, decision making/contingency planning, and spill response); coupled with quantitative data analysis by Fuzzy Set Theory and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Fuzzy-TOPSIS) to enhance decision making during response operations. The efficiency of the integrated human factor analysis and decision support system is tested with data from a case study to generate a comprehensive priority rank, a robust sensitivity analysis, and other theoretical/practical insights. The proposed approach improves our knowledge on the significance of human factors/errors on oil spill accidents and response operations; and provides an improved support tool for decision making.

Oil-Exposed Mahi-Mahi More Likely to Lose Oil-Avoidance Behavior

Contact with oil may make it harder for the fish to avoid additional exposure, creating a vicious cycle following offshore oil spills.

Oil spill modeling: Mapping the knowledge domain

The year 2019 marks the anniversary of two major US offshore oil spills: the 50th anniversary of the Santa Barbara spill and the 30th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez. The consequences of these spills are profound, echoing throughout countless environmental, ecological and social systems. Each spill sparked a flurry of research focusing on the analysis and documentation of spill impacts and responses. The purpose of this progress report is to evaluate oil spill modeling research as a knowledge domain. Using bibliometric analysis techniques, we constructed a co-citation network for exploring key areas of research and seminal papers to highlight the evolution of oil spill research over the past 50 years. The paper concludes with recommendations for future work, detailing the importance of connecting the physical and social sciences for deepening our understanding of oil spills and their broader implications for communities and the environment.

Design of Lidar System Based on Marine Oil Spill Monitoring

The occurrence of offshore oil spill will cause great harm to Marine natural ecology and Marine living resources, and seriously affect Marine aquaculture, fishery, tourism and other Marine industries. In the field of monitoring oil spill accident, traditional passive remote sensing measurement is still relying on, and the monitoring of oil spill accident occurring at night is not very good. According to the condition of the surface of the oil spill at night monitoring requirements, design and development of laser radar for monitoring the sea are permeated with oil pollution. This article mainly from the super continuous spectrum of light sources and monochrome laser radar detector selection, spectrometer wavelength calibration, the structure of the optical system design, radar receiving system image quality evaluation, the mechanical structure design and mechanics analysis and prototype design aspects, introduces the first system design of laser radar in detail. The design indexes of lidar system for monitoring oil spill pollution meet the technical requirements.

Ultralight, highly compressible, hydrophobic and anisotropic lamellar carbon aerogels from graphene/polyvinyl alcohol/cellulose nanofiber aerogel as oil removing absorbents

In increasingly serious marine pollution environment, environmentally friendly low-density aerogels have become potential oil-water separation materials. However, many reported aerogels have the drawbacks of low oil absorption, poor compressibility and flexibility, which limit their application. Herein, we reported a compressible, anisotropic lamellar hydrophobic and lipophilic graphene/polyvinyl alcohol/cellulose nanofiber carbon aerogel (a-GPCCA) prepared by directional freeze-drying and carbonization processes. The synthetic ultralight a-GPCCA had low density (6.17 mg/cm3) and high porosity (99.61 %). Moreover, directional freeze-drying resulted in a lamellar interpenetrated three-dimensional porous structure, which endowed it with high adsorption capacity (155–288 times of its weight), good compressibility (95 % recovery after repeating 15 cycles at 50 % strain in parallel to the freezing direction) and recyclability (oil retention rate reached 88.8 % after 10 absorption-compression cycles). Furthermore, carbonization provided it with excellent thermal stability and hydrophobic properties, resulting in oil-water selectivity and combustion cyclicity (the oil absorption capacity was reduced by only 10.2 % after 10 absorption-combustion cycles). Therefore, the a-GPCCA obtained in this study possesses a promising potential in the field of treatment of offshore oil spills and domestic industrial wastewater.

A Review on the Factors Affecting the Deposition, Retention, and Biodegradation of Oil Stranded on Beaches and Guidelines for Designing Laboratory Experiments

The distribution and persistence of oil within the matrix of a beach depends on the oil and beach properties, the presence of fines in the water column, and beach hydrodynamics and biochemistry. In this review, we attempted to provide an assessment of the journey of oil from offshore oil spills until it deposits within beaches. In particular, we addressed the disparity of spatial scales between microscopic processes, such as the formation of oil particle aggregates and oil biodegradation, and large-scale forcings, such as the tide. While aerobic biodegradation can remove more than 80% of the oil mass from the environment, its rate depends on the pore water concentration of oxygen and nutrients, both of them vary across the beach and with time. For this reason, we discussed in details the methods used for measuring water properties in situ and ex situ. We also noted that existing first-order decay models for oil biodegradation are expedient, but might not capture impacts of water chemistry on oil biodegradation. We found that there is a need to treat the beach–nearshore system as one unit rather than two separate entities. Scaling down large-scale hydrodynamics requires a coarser porous medium in the laboratory. Unfortunately, this implies that microscopic-scale processes cannot be reproduced in such a setup, and one needs a separate system for simulating small-scale processes. Our findings of large spatio-temporal variability in pore-water properties suggest that major advancements in addressing oil spills on beaches require holistic approaches that combine hydrodynamics with biochemistry and oil chemistry.