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Large-scale basin testing to simulate realistic oil droplet distributions from subsea release of oil and the effect of subsea dispersant injection

Abstract

Small-scale experiments performed at SINTEF, Norway in 2011–12 led to the development of a modified Weber scaling algorithm. The algorithm predicts initial oil droplet sizes (d50) from a subsea oil and gas blowout. It was quickly implemented in a high number of operational oil spill models used to predict fate and effect of subsea oil releases both in academia and in the oil industry.

This paper presents experimental data from large-scale experiments generating oil droplet data in a more realistic multi-millimeter size range for a subsea blow-out. This new data shows a very high correlation with predictions from the modified Weber scaling algorithm both for untreated oil and oil treated by dispersant injection.

This finding is opposed to earlier studies predicting significantly smaller droplets, using a similar approach for estimating droplet sizes, but with calibration coefficients that we mean are not representative of the turbulence present in such releases.
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Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Ocean / Climate and Environment
  • Canada

Year

2021

Published in

Marine Pollution Bulletin

ISSN

0025-326X

Volume

163

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository