Modeling research of exposure to oil aerosols during oil spills

Abstract

When oil is spilled at sea, aerosols containing oil or chemical dispersants (when they are used to combat the oil spill) can be formed from wind/wave interactions, wave/ship interactions, and some other attendant cleanup operations. This may result in oil aerosol exposure to response workers or the nearby public. In this paper, a modeling approach is proposed to study the resultant aerosol concentrations around an oil spill site. This computational modeling is developed by integrating aerosol formation with aerosol transportation equations. Using this model, several hypothetical scenarios can be generated. From computational iterations, it is seen that this exposure may be negligible in most situations, but under extreme conditions, a cause for concern.