A model to simulate the spreading of oil and gas in underwater oil spills
Main Authors: | Niu, X., Li, X., Yu, X. |
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Format: | Article |
Bahasa: | eng |
Terbitan: |
Hasanuddin University Press
, 2013
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: |
http://repository.unhas.ac.id/handle/123456789/7678 |
Daftar Isi:
- The rapid growth of offshore oil production and undersea oil delivery pipelines increases the risk of underwater oil spill. In this study, a model based on the Lagrangian particle tracking method is developed to simulate the spreading of oil and gas in an underwater oil spill, which is helpful to estimate the environmental impact and to find effective measures for preventing the spreading of oil. The oil droplets and gas bubbles released from the leakage point are modeled by a large number of representative particles, which are divided into several groups to simulate different components of oil and gas leaked from the underwater blowout. The movement of each particle in one time step includes two components, a mean movement and a random walk. The mean movement is computed by combining the effect of surrounding marine hydrodynamic, the buoyant jet flow near the leakage point and the rise velocity of representative oil droplets or gas bubbles.The random walk method is used to simulate the turbulent diffusion. The compressibility and dissolution of gas are also considered, which play an important role in deepwater. Comparing with the previous models for underwater oil spill based on the integral Lagrangian control volume method, the present model is more flexible in simulating the crude oil which has complex components. The model is validated by several experiment cases and successfully applied to simulate the DeepSpill field expreiment, and good agreement between the calculation and the observation is obtained. The fractionation of different gas bubbles or oil droplets is considered and significant differences in the underwater distribution of oil droplets and gas bubbles with different sizes are clearly shown in the simulated results.