How do you clean up an oil spill?

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/oilspill/cleanup.html

No two oil spills are the same because of the variation in oil types, locations, and weather conditions involved. However, broadly speaking, there are four main methods of response.

(1) Leave the oil alone so that it breaks down by natural means. If there is no possibility of the oil polluting coastal regions or marine industries, the best method is to leave it to disperse by natural means. A combination of wind, sun, current, and wave action will rapidly disperse and evaporate most oils. Light oils will disperse more quickly than heavy oils.

(2) Contain the spill with booms and collect it from the water surface using skimmer equipment. Spilt oil floats on water and initially forms a slick that is a few millimeters thick. There are various types of booms that can be used either to surround and isolate a slick, or to block the passage of a slick to vulnerable areas such as the intake of a desalination plant or fish-farm pens or other sensitive locations. Boom types vary from inflatable neoprene tubes to solid, but buoyant material. Most rise up about a meter above the water line. Some are designed to sit flush on tidal flats while others are applicable to deeper water and have skirts which hang down about a meter below the waterline. Skimmers float across the top of the slick contained within the boom and suck or scoop the oil into storage tanks on nearby vessels or on the shore. However, booms and skimmers are less effective when deployed in high winds and high seas.

(3) Use dispersants to break up the oil and speed its natural biodegradation. Dispersants act by reducing the surface tension that stops oil and water from mixing. Small droplets of oil are then formed, which helps promote rapid dilution of the oil by water movements. The formation of droplets also increases the oil surface area, thus increasing the exposure to natural evaporation and bacterial action. Dispersants are most effective when used within an hour or two of the initial spill. However, they are not appropriate for all oils and all locations. Successful dispersion of oil through the water column can affect marine organisms like deep-water corals and sea grass. It can also cause oil to be temporarily accumulated by subtidal seafood. Decisions on whether or not to use dispersants to combat an oil spill must be made in each individual case. The decision will take into account the time since the spill, the weather conditions, the particular environment involved, and the type of oil that has been spilt.

(4) Introduce biological agents to the spill to hasten biodegradation. Most of the components of oil washed up along a shoreline can be broken down by bacteria and other microorganisms into harmless substances such as fatty acids and carbon dioxide. This action is called biodegradation. The natural process can be speeded up by the addition of fertilizing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous, which stimulate growth of the microorganisms concerned. However the effectiveness of this technique depends on factors such as whether the ground treated has sand or pebbles and whether the fertilizer is water soluble or applied in pellet or liquid form.

Thanks for the post.

Seven years after the oil spill in Buzzards Bay, Mass, you can still smell oil if you dig up sand or marsh. While the above will make it more aesthetically pleasant, the oil is still there and likely will be there for years, maybe centuries.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/41996/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__Exxon_Valdez_oil_lingers,_as_does_its_toxicity

While surface oiling from the roughly 11-million-gallon spill of crude has disappeared, oil now turns up with some regularity just under the surface of tidal sediments in areas that initially had been heavily hit. Or so notes a 2009 Status Report that was issued this month by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. This joint state-and-federal body was established to oversee the use of a $900 million civil settlement (collected from Exxon Co. USA, now ExxonMobil) to restore the area’s oil-hammered ecosystems.

"bio-degradable". Oil is NOT very "bio-degradable" Even if it evaporates, it is in the air and will return to earth. It doesn't just go away. If you disperse it, it doesn't just go away. It breaks into smaller and smaller droplets, but it DOESN'T GO AWAY! And, by all means, let's drop tons of PHOSPHOROUS on the shore and hope that will break up the sludge. Jeez!

Look at the older streets -- the asphalt is gradually degraded by sunlight, water, temperature changes, and biota.

Asphalt is the heaviest fraction of crude oil.

I thought it meant that a substance such as a plant that breaks down sufficiently that it can be used as fuel by another organism. As for ashphalt, does it ever really go away or does it just turn into a powder and mix with soil as a pollutant? Perfect example is the trash bags that were marketed years ago as "bio-degradable". They weren't. It was determined that they were merely "degradable" meaning that after a number of years in a landfill, the plastic bags broke down into little bits of plastic. Glad, or whomever, had to stop using the term.

For example, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1389852/

Biodegradation of crude oil by microbials appears to be the natural process by which the bulk of the polluting oil is used as an organic carbon source, causing the breakdown of petroleum components to lower molecular compounds or transformed into the other organic compounds such as biosurfactants (Chhatre et al., 1996). In another words, biodegradation of crude oil contaminants can be described as the conversion of chemical compounds by microorganisms into energy, cell mass and biological products. As the compositions of organic compounds in crude oil are rather complicated, the rates of uptake of specific compounds by a microbial depend on their distributions in crude oil.

However, note that the conversion may be made easier by physical processes that dilute or emulsify the chemicals in crude oil or which cause higher weight molecules to be broken down prior to utilization by organisms.

So there goes that idea.

Hair booms, digging it up and burning it or making parking lots from it (send in the gypsies), and praying to the spaghetti monster to remove it, are the American ways.

Take your pick. We're screwed.

before you ever drill the fucker!

:banghead:

and recovered about 80% of the spilled oil. That is easier accomplished if dispersants aren't used. As near as I can determine, the main reason for the dispersants is so the spill doesn't look as bad on camera.