Search for: All records

Abstract Arctic oil spills are particularly detrimental as they could cause extensive ice melting in addition to the environmental pollution they create. Floating oil slicks amongst ice floes absorb ambient energy and transfer that energy to the ice to aggravate melting in the thaw season. However, few studies have been undertaken to reveal how oil-ice interactions impact ice melting. This research employs a measurement technique to investigate the heat transfer pathways from oil slicks to the ice. Dual-luminescence imaging and particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) in a side cooled cavity is performed for temperature and velocity measurements of Toluene, respectively. Dual-luminescence imaging captured the spatial temperature distribution of the fuel. Consecutive imaging of the seeding particles in PIV provided the spatial velocity field of the fuel in the cavity. The results show that the convective field is directly coupled with the temperature field, i.e., the temperature difference instigates a flow in the liquid. Successful implementation of the two measuring techniques together is a step toward analyzing heat transfer pathways in a liquid fuel adjacent to an ice body, indicating the extent of melting. 

Oil spill in oceans is identified as a key environmental issue resulting in water contamination and major harm to marine life. These spills in ice-infested waters can be even more catastrophic as the process of ice melting is non-trivial and adds an additional complexity in determining the extent of the oil spread from the initial spill zone. The prediction of the impact and extent of the spill assists in employing the required clean-up countermeasures. A validated numerical model that simulates the oil spread is reported in this study, where the spread of an oil layer in ice is analyzed. Experiments in literature have shown that for solar radiation flux higher than 0.5 kW/m2, the oil temperatures can be around 5 - 6 ºC even if the ambient is at sub-zero temperature. This surface heating is simulated in the numerical model to study the effect of in-depth heating of oil on the ice melting to further analyze the spreading of oil in the melt zone.