Conference Description:

The huge volume of hydrocarbons transported through pipelines and by ships poses a continuous risk to the environment due to accidental spills. Understanding the processes determining oil trajectory and fate, and learning oil spill simulation tools, allows environmental professionals to design better response plans, and help mitigate future events.

This course provides insight into the main processes that govern overland and water oil spills and offers practical training to perform oil spill simulations using the OilFlow2D computational model. The course offers hands-on experience in setting up and running a variety of scenarios including pipeline spills hitting sensitive areas, and spills on sea and riverine environments, allowing to determine where the oil will go, giving the spill location and volume.



Learning topics include:

Type of hydrocarbons and their characteristics.
Crude oil properties databases.
Behaviour of hydrocarbons in the environment.
Concepts and theories of the process of oil spreading on the surface of the water and land.
Influence of the wind, currents and waves in the spreading processes.
Formulation to calculate Evaporation, infiltration, emulsification, dissolution, interaction with shore, heat transfer, etc.
Effect of oil fate processes on oil viscosity and density.