OIL SPILL MODELING—A TOOL FOR CLEANUP OPERATIONS

ABSTRACT This study, carried out at the VKI, the Water Quality Institute, Denmark, includes development of an oil spill weathering model, which can be combined with a transport model to produce an operational oil spill model. The weathering model consists of three modules: a mass transport module, a heat transport module, and a module computing physical and chemical properties of the oil slick. The mass transport module takes the following processes into account: spreading, horizontal and vertical dispersion, evaporation, emulsification, and upwelling of dispersed oil droplets. The heat transport module takes into consideration solar radiation, heat transfer between the oil and water and the air, evaporative heat loss, and radiation. The oil is divided up into six fractions, with each fraction characterized by boiling point and chemical structure. The physical and chemical properties of the slick are calculated by summing up the corresponding properties of each fraction. This weathering model computes the...