A study of spreading of crude oil in an ice channel

An oil spill on solid ice poses unique challenges to that of a spill on water or land. One challenge, which this study has elected to investigate, is the tendency of ice to crack and form channels. These channels are able to transport the oil away from the main mass of the spill making efficient cleanup difficult. Within the context of in situ burning, the oil channels may expedite the critical thickness of the oil spill being reached. A series of bench scale tests using a 100 cm long ice channel were conducted to study the effects of varying ice channel widths on the spread of an oil mixture, to mimic solid sea ice conditions that may be found in higher latitudes. Results suggest that spread rates of oil in ice channels approximately follows a viscous two-dimensional box model. The implication of these results on in situ burning of oil in icy conditions is discussed.

► We modeled an oil spill in an ice channel from a assumed to be a constant flux source.
► The experiments were compared against a 2D buoyancy-inertial and buoyancy-viscous model.
► Neither model predicted the experimental data exactly but the buoyancy-viscous model was closest.
►  The buoyancy-viscous model is an asymptotic model and so cannot be relied upon to provide accurate estimates of the front speed for very early times.