With increasing activities of deep water exploration for oil and gas, the potential for offshore oil spill increases. A recent example is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2010). An important component of the response to these deepwater oil/gas spills would be a reliable mathematical model which plays a contributory role by predicting likely scenarios arising out of the spill.  A fully three-dimensional, multiphase, multi-component computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model provides greater generality and can provide valuable information on the transport phenomena of the deepwater oil/gas spill. This research builds such a framework to capture hydrodynamic and interface processes and validate them with carefully controlled laboratory and field experiments. We present the dynamic simulation results on the trajectory of an oil/gas plume that is released under laboratory conditions superimposed with a cross-flow. Experimental results are taken from Masutani and Adams (experimental study of multi-phase plumes with application to deep ocean oil spills, Final Report to the MMS U.S. Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service by Univ. of Hawaii, 2001). Deepwater density gradients caused by thermal and salinity changes with depth may trap the oil plume below the surface.  At these conditions the methane solubility is high and small amounts of oil also dissolve. We developed a mathematical model for dynamics of a three-phase plume (oil, gas and water) and the separation of oil and gas plumes in the presence of the ambient cross-currents. With this model few small scale simulations have been performed in the range of ambient currents (0.02 -0.1 m/s). As the ambient current increases to 10 cm/s the separation of the oil/gas plumes is more pronounced. We also present simulations for the dye and gas plume in stratified environment. Preliminary results will be presented and validated against available experimental and field data.

Towards a comprehensive model of the transport processes in deep water oil and gas spill subject to surfactant exposure

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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