Material selection study for the brush type arctic skimmers

• Main Authors: Sassi, Jukka, Vuorinen, Tommi, Rytkönen, Jorma
• Format: Other Non-Article Part of Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Environment Canada 2017
• Subjects: contamination; diesel fuels; fuel oils; macros; marine pollution; pickups; technical presentations; testing; /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/sustainable_cities_and_communities; SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities; /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_below_water; SDG 14 - Life Below Water; Arctic
• Online Access: https://cris.vtt.fi/en/publications/b9d5df76-9f2e-4e03-96a0-adc011a83698; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85040075992&partnerID=8YFLogxK

The objective of the study was to test several bristle materials, which are designed for arctic brush skimmers, and find out the possible differences in their performance with two different oil type and in three temperatures. Additional objective was to clarify the possible correlation between the results from Wilhelmy plate experiments and macro-scale test results. The tests were performed in the collaboration with VTT and SYKE. Two test drums from both bristle materials were manufactured for the macro scale tests, one for marine diesel oil and one for heavy fuel oil. The design of the drums and bristles were predefined to enable the comparison of the results. The test program was two-fold; in the first phase totally 11 different materials were tested with the Wilhelmy plate method in order to determine the surface tension of the particular test oil with the bristle materials. According to the Wilhelmy plate measurements, two materials were selected for the macro-scale tests. The tests were carried out according to a specific test program particularly prepared for the macro-scale tests. All the tests were performed without water or ice, and depending on the oil type and temperature, each test was repeated 5 or 10 times. The results indicated that the differences in the oil pick-up rates were smaller with heavy fuel oil than with marine diesel oil, and different materials had diverse trends in the variation of the pick-up rates between the test runs. In addition, the correlation between the Wilhelmy plate experiments and the macro scale tests could be observed.