Basic Oil Spill and Containment Information for Everyone

“Oil spill” is apparently a harmless term that has nothing to do with health and environmental hazards. It’s easier to cleanup a small spill but this seemingly simple term can become significantly dangerous when oil spill happens at large extent, which is difficult to manage.  Oil spill can happen anywhere – on the sea and on the land. Both of these can be harmful for animals and plants. It’s extremely difficult and expensive to cleanup, especially when oil spills on the ocean and poisons the water. There are advanced technologies available for spill containment and filtration which offer some way to manage the situation but in most cases the damage is done much before you swing into action.

Image Courtesy: www.oilgoneeasy.com

   Reasons of Oil Spill

There are several reasons behind oil spills happening - from accidents to someone doing it deliberately. Here are some major causes,

·         Accident of vehicles carrying oil

·         Drowning of vessels transporting oil

·         Bursting of land or under-sea pipe-lines carrying crude oil

·         Terrorist activities

Oil Spill Containment

Oil spill containment deals with the issue of controlling the spills after they happen. The basic idea of it is controlling the extent of damage and saving environment & life from ill-effects of spill on the location. There are time-tested methods and advanced technologies available for containing oil spills on land and sea.

·         On Land:

For managing spills in most refineries, oil reservoirs and pipelines, the method of putting up earth dams around the storage area is an old technique. This ensures a prompt containment action as soon as spill happens. Another old method is digging up dirt from around the spill area and disposing it in a specific location earmarked for the purpose.  This way the contaminated earth is removed from the spill site for safety. Several other techniques and media are used including Zeolite, Perlite and oil absorbent clay for cleanup and filtration of oil spill and pollution.

·         On Sea:

The physical property of oil makes it float on top of water. When oil spills at sea, the floating substance forms a layer known as oil slick. For containing oil slick from spreading, long tubes filled with oil absorbent material are placed around it. In another technique skimmers, which are specially developed ships to skim oil from the surface of spill location, are employed to manage the situation. Apart from skimmers, detergents are also used to disperse the oil. This is an old method which hides the oil spill but do not clean it up.

Image Courtesy: www.ferret.com.au

StormwaterManagement involves procedure for filtration and removal of the most challenging target pollutants, including chemicals, solid materials, soluble metals and oil spills from water body. Motor fuel, grease, petroleum hydrocarbon and organic carbon are some commonly found pollutants in stormwater.