In-Situ Burning of Crude Oil on Water:A study on the fire dynamics and fire chemistry in an Arctic context

• Main Author: van Gelderen, Laurens
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Technical University of Denmark, Department of Civil Engineering 2017
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/2a63614d-586c-40d1-acf3-522f732fe36c; https://backend.orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/132669572/Orbit.pdf

The fire dynamics and fire chemistry of in-situ burning of crude oil on water was studied in order to improve predictions on the suitability of this oil spill response method. For this purpose, several operational parameters were studied to determine the factors that control the burning efficiency of in-situ burning, i.e. the amount of oil (in wt%) removed from the water surface by the burning process. The burning efficiency is the main parameter for expressing the oil removal effectiveness of in-situ burning as response method and is thus relevant for suitability predictions of in-situ burning as oil spill response method. The parameters studied were the initial slick thickness of the oil, the vaporization order of burning crude oil, the ignition of fresh and weathered crude oils on water, the influence of the burning area, the effect of the water layer below the burning oil and the use of chemical herders in ice-infested water to thicken spread oil slicks. All the experimental work, except for the crude oil herding studies in ice-infested water, was conducted in several small and intermediate scale setups with oil pool diameters between 0.1 m and 1.1 m. The main apparatus used in this study featured a water basin (water volume of 1.0 x 1.0 x 0.50 m3) in which a 0.34 m high Pyrex glass cylinder with a diameter of 0.16 m was placed to contain the oil samples. Several fresh crude oils, refined oils, and pure oils, which were used as reference fuels, were burned in this setup to study the surface temperature, burning rate, flame height, burning efficiency and chemical composition of the burn residue as a function of the oil type, the initial slick thickness and other experimental conditions. The results showed that crude oils burned distinctively different from pure oils and refined fuel oils, as no steady state burning behavior was observed for the crude oils. Whereas the pure reference oils burned with relatively constant surface temperatures, burning rates and flame heights, the surface temperature increased ...