Modeling an Oil Spill along the Southern Brazilian Shelf: Forcing Characterization and Its Influence on the Oil Fate

Abstract

Oil spills can generate multiple effects in different time scales on the marine ecosystem. The numerical modeling of these processes is an important tool with low computational cost which provides a powerful appliance to environmental agencies regarding the risk management. In this way, the objective of this work is to evaluate the influence of a number of physical forcing acting over a hypothetical oil spill along the Southern Brazilian Shelf. The numerical simulation was carried out using the ECOS model (Easy Coupling Oil System), an oil spill model developed at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande-FURG, coupled with the tridimensional hydrodynamic model TELEMAC3D (EDF, France). The hydrodynamic model provides the current velocity, salinity and temperature fields used by the oil spill model to evaluate the behavior and the fate of the spilled oil. The results suggest that the local wind influence is the main forcing driven the fate of the spilled oil, and this forcing responds for more than 60% of the oil slick variability. The direction and intensity of the costal currents control between 20% and 40% of the oil variability, and the currents are important controlling the behavior and the tridimensional transportation of the oil. On the other hand, the turbulent diffusion is important for the horizontal drift of the oil. The weathering results indicate 40% of evaporation and 80% of emulsification, and the combination of these processes leads an increasing of the oil density around, 53.4 kg/m³ after 5 days of simulation.

Susceptibility to oil spill spreading using case studies and simulated scenarios

“…ECOS represents an oil slick as a set of discrete particles, the displacement and properties of which are updated at each time step considering changes in oil properties and hydrodynamic conditions (Mello et al, 2011;Stringari et al, 2013;Monteiro et al, 2017;. The oil model used takes into account the oil slick evaporation using the algorithms of Stiver and Mackay (1984) and Fingas (1995Fingas ( , 1999, with empirical coefficients obtained from Lehr et al (2002).…”

“…Since the velocities of winds and currents are the main physical effects of oil behaviour in the study area (Janeiro et al, 2008;Stringari et al, 2013;Monteiro et al, 2017;Kirinus et al, 2018), the spill simulations were analysed considering such geophysical variables.…”

Modelagem Numérica Da Reprodutibilidade De Derrame De Óleo Bunker Durante Operação De Abastecimento De Embarcação

“…Os registros mais comuns de ameaças com embarcações envolvem navios petroleiros (tankers), principalmente os casos de falhas operacionais em atividades rotineiras, como a transferência e o abastecimento de óleo em portos e terminais de produção. (Janeiro, 2008;Stringari, 2013, Marques, 2017Lopes et al, 2017).…”

“…ECOS acoplado ao Telemac3D (Stringari et al, 2013;Marques et al, 2017;Monteiro et al, 2017e Lopes et al, 2017.…”

Numerical Study of Oil Spill in the Patos Lagoon Under Flood and Ebb Conditions

“…Facing the difficulties to eliminate the possible accidents involving oil spills, mostly in areas where the transshipment of cargo in tankers occurs, it is important to establish quick action protocols against such accidents [7][8][9]. This demands precise forecasts of the consequences of eventual spills.…”