Soot reduction of in-situ burning while cleaning of the spilled crude oil from sea

Oil spills which may occur while the transportation, extraction and the use of oil, can be removed by several oil spill response techniques. In-situ burning is one of these techniques that the spilled oil slick on the water surface burned and removed. Although it is used for decades, decide makers and public still has concerns about the black smoke plume created by burning itself and its hazardous effects to health and to the atmosphere. In this study, 2 classical in-situ burns, totally 6 experiments were conducted on a test tank and the product called ecopomex® were applied to oil slicks with two different ways as free pouring and cage system. All the tests has been recorded by video and photography techniques and the photograph of the densest moment of each test separated into grids for evaluation to determine the opacity, blackness and the amount of the smoke plume. The amount of residue oil after the burn had been measured and the difference between classic and ecopomex® poured burns were examined. Also burn efficiency and burn rate of tests were calculated to see the effects of the product to burning. The evaluation with the grid method showed that the burns conducted with ecopomex® has 70 % less opacity and density compared to classical burn. The total amount of oil which is removed from the water also increased by 10 to 50 % as an incombustible and oleophilic product, ecopomex® applied to the burns and recovered.