Combustion of floating, water-in-oil emulsion layers subjected to external heat flux

In-situ oil spill combustion can be a highly effective clean up measure for contained spills occurring on open water bodies, such as oil spill on the ocean contained by booms or a spill surrounded by ice. Results obtained from several burn tests with pools of water-in-oil emulsions for diesel and Milne Point crude floating on water, and for emulsions of Alaska North Slope crude were presented. The diesel emulsions ranged from 20 to 80% water content, crude oil emulsions ranged from 0 to 40% water content, and the external radiant heat flux ranged from 0 to 14 kw/sq m. Emulsion burning was very sensitive to the external radiation heat flux. Below a certain threshold heat flux ignition was impossible, but slightly above that flux, emulsions burned very well, with reasonable removal efficiency. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 23rd Arctic and Marine Oil Spill Program, AMOP Technical Seminar (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 6/14-16/2000).