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| Fig. 1: Persian Gulf Oil Fire from Spill (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
For the past couple decades, we as a world have seen the detrimental effects of oil spills. They are nasty, cause an immense amount of problems to our environment, and somehow we still have not yet figured out an effective way to clean them up in a timely manner. In an article by the Wall Street Journal recent oil spills in Russia and Mauritius have shown that we still have not found ways to clean up efficiently. [1] The implementation of solar-powered robots, oil absorbing wood chips, and a reusable sponge are some of the options that University researchers are looking at. Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a reusable sponge coated in a mixture containing iron and carbon that can absorb 30 times its weight in oilAlthough most oil spills are caused by these large oil corporations themselves, Universities and small research companies are finding out how to combat this epidemic in the most efficient way possible.
According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the number of large oil spills has been decreasing annually since the year of 1975. [2] These high volume oil spills were classified as being 700,000 or more kg of oil spilled. In the 1970s there were 24 large spills while now this past decade in the 2010s there was only 1.8 on average, that one being the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We have done a better job at protecting oil spills from happening by attaining adequate equipment, changing protocols, and protecting pipelines from hurricanes and foul weather that used to be a very significant problem. If you look to the right in Fig. 1, you will see a picture of the Gulf War oil spill that happened in January of 1991. This was the largest oil spill to ever happen since countries became heavily involved in the field of offshore drilling for oil. It was estimated that between five million and ten million barrels of oil (136 Kg in each barrel) were spilled into the Persian Gulf in 1991. [3]
According to the Wall Street Journal, the four most common ways to transport oil, pipelines, boats, railroads, and trucks, are not going away any time soon. There have been recent developments in the past decade to ensure that when transporting as much oil as these vessels move, nothing goes wrong. In the pipelines, there are going to be small torpedo like robots called smart pigs to monitor corrosion and stress. For boats, mandatory Coast Guard checks of seals and cracking down on boats to make sure they have double-hulled foundations is going to be the best course of action. On the railroad, besides telling conductors to drive slower, there isn't much to do. Finally, although there are little mishaps that happen with truck drivers transporting crude oil, there are going to be more implementations with driver safety in the future. [4]
© Kyle Petrucci. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] E. Sylvers and S. McFarlane, "Future of Cleaning Oil Spills Looks to Robots, Wood Chips and Sponges," Wall Street Journal, 30 Aug 20.
[2] B. Roberts and J. Myers, "US Outer Continental Shelf Oil Spill Statistics," Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM 2018-006, March 2018.
[3] M. Tutton, "Lessons Learned from the Largest Oil Spill in History," CNN, 4 Jun 10.
[4] D. Molinski, "How to Transport Oil More Safely," Wall Street Journal, 13 Sep 15.
