NUMERICAL STUDY of UNDERWATER DISTRIBUTION of OIL SPILLED from DEEPWATER AREA

The offshore oil production has increased significantly in the last several decades with the worldwide increasing demand for oil and dwindling onshore reserves. Exploration of oil and gas in offshore regions as well as the oil transportation through pipelines increase the risk of underwater oil spills. In oil spills due to underwater accidents, such as a broken oil pipeline or an oil well blowout at the sea bed, oil usually behaves as a submerged buoyant jet. Underwater blowouts often contain a mix of oil and gas. The advection/diffusion equation is not valid for simulating the oil trajectory and dispersal pattern until oil reaches the far field [1,2]. Based on a Lagrangian integral technique and Lagrangian particle-tracking technique, a numerical model was developed to simulate the underwater transport of oil from a deepwater spill in Matlab programming environment. This model comprises two submodels: a plume dynamics model and an advection-diffusion model. The former is used to simulate the stages dominated by the initial jet momentum and plume buoyancy of the spilled oil, while the latter is used to simulate the stage dominated by the ambient current and turbulence. The model validity was verified through comparisons of the model predictions with experimental and field data.