There are four main
strategies that responders currently employ to clean up oil
spills. In many spill situations; spill responders will employ
more than one strategy in different locations or in different
phases of the cleanup operation:
Mechanical
Recovery and Containment:
Responders attempt to corral as much of the oil as possible and
remove it from the surface of the water where it floats at a
thickness of at most a few millimetres. Workers deploy floating
booms to contain or fence off the oil slick or portions of the
slick. The oil is then collected with skimmers, which remove oil
and water from the surface and separate the oil from the water or
with vacuum hoses, which suck up oil from the surface.
Dispersants:
Dispersants are a form of chemical detergent sprayed onto an oil
spill from aircraft or boats. The chemicals break the oil up into
tiny droplets, which spread through the water column. The use of
dispersants accelerates the process of physical and chemical
breakdown that would occur during natural weathering, but is
extremely slow in still/calm waters.
Burning:
In some oil spills the oil burns as a result of an explosion
onboard the tanker. In other situations, cleanup crews
intentionally set an oil slick ablaze to burn oil off the surface
of the water. In intentional burns, often called "in-situ
burning," the oil is concentrated and corralled through the use of
booms and ignited by flares, bombs, rockets, or lasers. The fire
burns until the fuel runs out or conditions favourable to
combustion change.
Absorbent/Tissues:
Should the spill reach onshore, a plethora of natural and
synthetic absorbents are used to wipe or absorb the oil from the
surface of the shoreline. The size of the crew grows
exponentially with the size of the spill. Spent absorbent and
tissues do not collect much oil and are disposed or incinerated at
special hazardous materials sites.
