16:30–16:45 | ABSTRACT 1178
OPTICAL MEASUREMENT OF OIL SLICK THICKNESS USING ACTIVE INTERFEROMETRY
Having severe ecological and economical consequences, ocean oil spills—the human-induced release of liquid petroleum hydrocarbons into the marine environment—are of great concern worldwide. The ability to efficiently respond to oil spill events and mitigate their negative impact depends on the ability to collect reliable information on the thickness of the resulting oil slicks, which is essential to accurately estimating the amount and environmental impact of the floating oil, model spreading and evaporation processes, and optimize countermeasures such as in-situ burning and chemical dispersion. We present a novel an optical system for in-situ measurements of oil slicks thickness using reflective spectroscopy. Leveraging the multiple reflections of light from the air-oil interface and from the oil-water interface, our apparatus forms an interference pattern between them. The spectral dependence of this interference pattern is utilized to compute the thickness of the oil product layer floating above seawater. We tested the ability of the system to accurately measure the thickness of thin (0.382–23.3 µm) floating layers from two different and common types of oil products, namely condensate and crude oil. In a series of laboratory experiments we were able to measure the thickness of the layers with an accuracy of 95%. These results open the way for real-time, in situ thickness measurements that will improve oil-spill mitigation effort.
Jean Pierre Obeid*, University of Haifa, [email protected], https://orcid.org/0009-0009-6648-833X
Yoav Lehahn, University of Haifa, [email protected]
Atef Shalabney, Braude College of Engineering, [email protected]
Aviv Solodoch, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, [email protected]
Eyal Rahav, Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, [email protected]
