2022
No Cover Photo

Share

654 Views
Generated with Avocode. icon 1 Mask color swatch
0 Downloads

An Overview of Oil-Mineral-Aggregate Formation, Settling, and Transport Processes in Marine Oil Spill Models

  • Zhong X.; Niu H.; Li P.; Wu Y.; Liu L.
  • Summary

An oil spill is considered one of the most serious polluting disasters for a marine environ-ment. When oil is spilled into a marine environment, it is dispersed into the water column as oil droplets which often interact with suspended particles to form oil-mineral-aggregate (OMA). Knowing how OMA form, settle, and are transported is critical to oil spill modelling which can determine the fate and mass balance of the spilled volumes. This review introduces oil weathering and movement, and the commonly used numerical models that oil spill specialists use to determine how a spill will evolve. We conduct in-depth reviews of the environmental factors that influence how OMA form and their settling velocity, and we review how OMA formation and transport are modelled. We point out the existing gaps in current knowledge and the challenges of studying OMA. Such challenges include having to systematically conduct laboratory experiments to investi-gate how the environment affects OMA formation and settling velocities, and the need for a com-prehensive algorithm that can estimate an OMA settling velocity. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

  • Published in:
    Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 10(5)
  • DOI:
    10.3390/jmse10050610
  • Pages:
    -
  • Language:
    English
  • Published Year:
    2022
  • External Link:
    Source