Prevention Of OIL

SPILLS
OUTLINE
• Oil spill
• Causes of oil spill
• Effects of oil spill
• Major Oil Spills
• Various types of Preventions
• Methodolgy
• Conclusions
• References
Causes of Oil Spills
• Sinking or leakage of Oil carrying
vessels or Oil pipelines
• Illegal dumping by industries
• Countries at war
• Terrorist activities
• Natural Disasters
Effects of Oil Spills
• Effects entire marine life
• Blocks entrance of oxygen in
water
• Fishes hatch with twisted
spines and deformed hearts
• Effects the food web when oil
reaches sea bed
• Natural recovery process may
require upto 10 years
Major Oil Spills
• Arabian Gulf Spills (1991)
Location – Persian Gulf
Cause – terminals and oil tankers destroyed
Quantity of oil spilled – 6 to 8 million barrels
• Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (1989)
Location – Alaskan waters
Cause – Ship wreckage
Quantity of oil spills – 260,000 barrels
• Gulf Oil Spill (2010)
Location - Gulf of Mexico
Cause - oil well below the gulf blew out
Quantity – 260 million gallons
PREVENTIONS
• Double-hulling - build double hulls into vessels,
which reduces the risk and severity of a spill in
case of a collision or grounding. Existing single-
hull vessels can also be rebuilt to have a double
hull.
• Secondary containment - methods to prevent
releases of oil or hydrocarbons into
environment.
• Blowout Preventer
• Well castings
 Making shipping safer

• Ship crew must be well trained

and experienced
• Strict fire safety regulations
apply on board
• Individual tanks within ships
should be limited in size so that
spills are smaller
• Vessel traffic control to be used
in more congested areas to
reduce the risk of collision
 Keeping the navigator informed
• Up to date information on
changing weather conditions
• Interpretation of radar and
satellite image reports for
sensitive coastal areas and inland
water routes
• Computer based video-display
that allows navigators to track
the ship course in relation to
hazards and warns the navigator
• Monitoring and control
equipment on ships; discharged
oil-water mixtures can be traced
back to the ship that was carrying
the oil
Methodology
There are a number of methods which may
apparently be used to deal with oil spills in
seawater. Some options used for marine
protection from oil pollution include:

•Mechanical Collection
•Chemical Dispersants
•Naturally available materials
By mechanical collection

• Setting fire to the oil spill:

Frequently crude oil is set on
fire in a wrecked ship when an
accident occurs. The problem of
burning surface oil is very
difficult due to less thickness of
the layer and large surface area.
The volatile fraction evaporates
quickly and makes it impossible
to ignite without doping special
measures.
• Skimming: It can be performed by employing devices for collecting
oil from a large area of water to make it a thicker layer in harbour
sheltered places.
By Chemical Dispersants
• Gelling: Spraying gelling
agents with a certain amount
of mixing energy into the oil
spill causes formation of gel
or coagulation. The resulting
lumps can be collected easily
in the vicinity of a wrecked
ship.
• Sinking: Mixing small fine granular solids of fairly high
density (sand) culminates into slurry, sinking the oil spill
to the bottom of the seabed.
• Absorbing: Floating oil can be separated due to
absorption applying chemicals.
By using naturally available materials

CORCHORUS DEPRESSUS - This plant acts as a sinking material

when used in the powder form for removal of oil from
seawater by absorbing oil and settling to the bottom.

ARACHIS HYPOGAEA - The solid pulp that

remains after edible oil is extracted from it
as a high protein live stock feed which
enables it to absorb the oil spill from sea
water which gets collected on the surface.
BENTONITE CLAY: It acts as a sinking material when added to
oil spill polluted water sample

ACTIVATED CARBON: This material causes the oil spill to form a

gel or coagulate, however due to its chemical composition it may
have negative side effects on marine health life environment
CONCLUSION
• Most oil spills and most serious accidents are caused by
human error, so this can be reduced if one takes extreme
precautions and proper safety assessments

• Focusing on many techniques such as Blowout preventer and

well castings can contain the oil spill

• Use of naturally available materials such as CORCHORUS

DEPRESSUS, ARACHIS HYPOGAEA, BENTONITE CLAY &
ACTIVATED CARBON helps containing the spill
REFERENCES
• Oil Spill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill

• Major Oil Spills

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-
resources/stories/the-13-largest-oil-spills-in-history

• Spill response – dispersants kill fish, journal Environmental

Toxicology and Chemistry. Retrieved 2010-05-21.

• Dr. Brian Dicks (1998), Paper presented at the International Seminar

on Tanker Safety, Pollution Prevention, Spill Response and
Compensation, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil