Oil Spills Clean-Up in Marine: Recent Advances, Challenges and Perspectives

A special issue of Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (ISSN 2077-1312). This special issue belongs to the section "Marine Pollution".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2022) | Viewed by 11943

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, Faculty of Marine Technology and Natural Sciences, Klaipeda University, Herkaus Manto Str. 84, 92294 Klaipeda, Lithuania
Interests: alternative marine fuels; LNG; blue biotechnology; oil spill clean-up; cellulose aerogel
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, Faculty of Marine Technology and Natural Sciences, Klaipeda University, Herkaus Manto Str. 84, 92294 Klaipeda, Lithuania
Interests: alternative marine fuels; oil spill clean-up; cellulose aerogels; pyrolysis; hydrodynamic cavitation; electrochemistry; smart materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Even though we are moving toward a fossil-free economy, the world is still very dependent on oil, and there are numerous oil spills every year which have negative impact on local ecosystems, human health, and the economy.

Therefore, it is crucial to apply viable, innovative response methods for removing oil in order to minimize the environmental consequences of oil spills. Their selection depends on a number of factors, e.g., type of product, hydrometeorological conditions, spill area, distance from the shore, local regulations, costs, and predictable impact or even reliability under difficult (environmental) conditions.

The clean-up of oil pollution is a difficult task, and it is important to continue research in this area. We therefore invite you to submit articles based on laboratory and field experiments, including but not limited to the following topics:

  • Oil spill case studies;
  • Oil spill modeling;
  • Oil weathering;
  • Oil spill response tools, techniques, and technologies;
  • Bioremediation;
  • Monitoring of oil spill pollution;
  • Impact of oil spills on marine ecosystems;
  • Marine oil spill risk assessment;
  • Remote sensing.

Dr. Tatjana Paulauskiene
Dr. Jochen Uebe
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Oil pollution 
  • Oil spills clean-up 
  • Oil spill response 
  • Oil spill modeling 
  • Oil spill risk analysis 
  • Oil weathering 
  • Bioremediation 
  • Remote sensing

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 8153 KiB  
Article
Detection of Massive Oil Spills in Sun Glint Optical Imagery through Super-Pixel Segmentation
by Zhen Sun, Shaojie Sun, Jun Zhao, Bin Ai and Qingshu Yang
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(11), 1630; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10111630 - 02 Nov 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2169
Abstract
Large volumes of crude oil accidentally released into the sea may cause irreversible adverse impacts on marine and coastal environments. Large swath optical imagery, acquired using platforms such as the moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS), is frequently used for massive oil spill detection, attributing [...] Read more.
Large volumes of crude oil accidentally released into the sea may cause irreversible adverse impacts on marine and coastal environments. Large swath optical imagery, acquired using platforms such as the moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS), is frequently used for massive oil spill detection, attributing to its large coverage and short global revisit, providing rich data for oil spill monitoring. The aim of this study was to develop a suitable approach for massive oil spill detection in sun glint optical imagery. Specifically, preprocessing procedures were conducted to mitigate the inhomogeneous light field over the spilled area caused by sun glint, enhance the target boundary contrast, and maintain the internal homogeneity within the target. The image was then segmented into super-pixels based on a simple linear clustering method with similar characteristics of color, brightness, and texture. The neighborhood super-pixels were merged into target objects through the region adjacency graph method based on the Euclidean distance of their colors with an adaptive termination threshold. Oil slicks from the generated bright/dark objects were discriminated through a decision tree with parameters based on spectral and spatial characteristics. The proposed approach was applied to oil spill detection in MODIS images acquired during the Montara oil spill in 2009, with an overall extraction precision of 0.8, recall of 0.838, and F1-score of 0.818. Such an approach is expected to provide timely and accurate oil spill detection for disaster emergency response and ecological impact assessment. Full article
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14 pages, 18145 KiB  
Article
Experimental Characterisation and Field Experience of a Reusable, Modified Polyurethane Foam for the Mechanical Clean-Up of Oil Spills on the Sea Surface
by Daniel Niehaus, Sebastian Hofmann, Srividya Bairamangala Kumar, Marko Hoffmann, Jesús Cisneros-Aguirre and Michael Schlüter
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(10), 1369; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10101369 - 25 Sep 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1631
Abstract
Oil spills at sea, such as the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010, are devastating environmental hazards, especially for biodiversity in the maritime ecosystem. In order to help the restoration of coastlines, it is critical to clean the oil up quickly and efficiently with [...] Read more.
Oil spills at sea, such as the Deepwater Horizon incident in 2010, are devastating environmental hazards, especially for biodiversity in the maritime ecosystem. In order to help the restoration of coastlines, it is critical to clean the oil up quickly and efficiently with various measures, such as the use of barriers, skimmers, sorbents, dispersing agents, in situ burning, and biological agents. However, most of them still cause high remediation costs; are inefficient, non-reusable, and not environmentally friendly; lack a convenient desorption method; or are simply not yet ready to use in a real-case scenario, where high amounts of hydrocarbons must be removed. Therefore, in this work, a reusable modified polyurethane foam for oil absorption on the sea surface is presented and characterised. Due to a chemical formulation with a special co-polymer, its oleophilic properties are strongly enhanced. Laboratory soaking tests with different oils and a mixture of Louisiana sweet crude oil with artificial sea water (ASW) are conducted. To do so, a pneumatic press with adjustable pressures was used to characterise the foam’s capability to recover oil between 10 and 18 times its own weight for a period of up to 50 consecutive repetitions with a maximum saturation in less than one minute. Sequential trials with different oil mass fractions in ASW determined a decreasing content of recovered ASW with increasing amounts of crude oil, while, in all cases, the total oil recovery rate proved to be more than 90% within one’s standard deviation. Finally, practical applications of sorption methods are presented to give an idea of difficulties encountered in real remediation scenarios. Full article
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16 pages, 4715 KiB  
Article
Optimisation Methodology for Skimmer Device Selection for Removal of the Marine Oil Pollution
by Marko Đorđević, Đani Šabalja, Đani Mohović and David Brčić
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(7), 925; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10070925 - 04 Jul 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2503
Abstract
This paper emphasised the importance of proper handling and selection of specialised skimmer equipment for accidental pollution with oils. The research was motivated by the lack of similar papers that offer an extensive and recent literature analysis related to the use of skimmers, [...] Read more.
This paper emphasised the importance of proper handling and selection of specialised skimmer equipment for accidental pollution with oils. The research was motivated by the lack of similar papers that offer an extensive and recent literature analysis related to the use of skimmers, with the ultimate aim to present the methodology for proper selection of appropriate pollution equipment. Knowledge on the equipment characteristics such as capacity, selectivity, speed, and pump power of the skimmer is essential for efficient and fast collection of spills. The study aimed to calculate the oil collection rate of an individual skimmer device with different pumps. The classification of skimmers, pumps, and collecting tanks was made according to their main features. The results showed the correlation between pump capacity and the skimmers. Due to the complexity of mechanical equipment and various devices, it was crucial to identify and connect the skimmer with the proper pump. For these reasons, the authors proposed a model which determines the optimal combination for thirteen skimmers and eleven pumps. The model can help shorten the time of collecting oil from the sea surface and provide a more efficient and smoother response in the events of accidental marine pollution. Full article
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17 pages, 3859 KiB  
Article
Removal of Petroleum Hydrocarbons from Brackish Water by Natural and Modified Sorbents
by Tatjana Paulauskiene, Jochen Uebe, Zilvinas Kryzevicius, Valeriia Kaskova, Marija Katarzyte and Donata Overlingė
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(5), 597; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10050597 - 28 Apr 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1866
Abstract
Crude oil and petroleum products made from it are increasingly being extracted and consumed worldwide as an important energy source. During necessary transportation, e.g., by tanker, an oil spill might occur, which leads to water pollution by oil. One of the methods of [...] Read more.
Crude oil and petroleum products made from it are increasingly being extracted and consumed worldwide as an important energy source. During necessary transportation, e.g., by tanker, an oil spill might occur, which leads to water pollution by oil. One of the methods of cleaning up oil spills is to use sorbents, preferably made from natural materials. This study evaluates the remediation efficiency of brackish water polluted with crude oil, marine diesel oil (MDO) and lubricating oil. The experiment was performed with three different sorbents (straw, straw modified with methoxytrimethylsilanes (MTMS) and wood chip shavings) and without them. The evaporation loss and the dissolved and sorbed fractions of oil were measured by gas chromatography (GC) to evaluate remediation efficiency. Hydrophobization made the natural sorbents buoyant for the duration of the experiment, with only a slight increase in the maximum sorption capacity. The sorbents increased the evaporation of the oils and also of the water, reduced the proportion of the oil dissolved in water and retained the sorbed proportion for the lubricating oil and partly for the MDO, to such an extent that it could not be extracted entirely even after a 60-min extraction time. Full article
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14 pages, 3093 KiB  
Article
Sustainable Cross-Linkers for the Synthesis of Cellulose-Based Aerogels: Research and Application
by Tatjana Paulauskiene, Audrone Teresiute, Jochen Uebe and Arturas Tadzijevas
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(4), 491; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10040491 - 02 Apr 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2295
Abstract
Cellulose aerogels with polyester resin as cross-linkers have attracted much attention. This study describes the route to produce a fully bio-based aerogel with high added value from waste paper and starch, cellulose acetate and starch–cellulose acetate mixture as cross-linkers for oil adsorption, instead [...] Read more.
Cellulose aerogels with polyester resin as cross-linkers have attracted much attention. This study describes the route to produce a fully bio-based aerogel with high added value from waste paper and starch, cellulose acetate and starch–cellulose acetate mixture as cross-linkers for oil adsorption, instead of the environmentally harmful polyester resin. The manufacturing process is simple, sustainable and cost-efficient, without releasing harmful by-products into the environment. The effects of different cross-linkers on the oil adsorption, dynamic oil retention, reusability and morphology of the aerogels were studied in detail. Experimental results show that these environmentally friendly recycled aerogels have a very low density, i.e., —0.0110–0.0209 g cm−3, and highly porous structures, with a porosity of 96.74–99.18%. The synthesized hydrophobic aerogels showed contact angles of ∼124–129°. The compression moduli are lower than that of an aerogel with polyester as a cross-linker, but the compression modulus of the mixture of starch and cellulose acetate especially shows a higher value than expected. The sorption capacity of the aerogels with bio-based cross-linkers was significantly increased compared to the aerogels with polyester; it is now up to 56 times their own weight. The aerogels also have good oil-retention properties. Full article
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