A Model Incorporating Wind And Temperature Effects on Crude Oil Spill on Niger Delta Coastal Line

ABSTRACT               

The Niger Delta coastal line is one of Nigeria’s richest and largest navigation corridors, characterized by very windy and temperature conditions, such that with possibility of any oil spill incident, catastrophic environmental degradation will occur. Available mathematical models for predicting crude oil spills spread rate will not provide accurate prediction of spread rate under ambient temperature changes and wind effects. This work is concerned with developing a model that incorporates wind and temperature effects on the spread rate of crude oil spill on Niger Delta coastal line. The model of Susu and Abowei (1998) were reviewed and their limitations noted. Further improvement is made by considering spreading in the regime where the inertial and viscous forces counterbalance gravity and takes into account climatic factors such as the effects of winds and temperature. The effective wind velocity and direction on the oil slick were resolved by the application of trigonometric principles, analysis and correlations. Temperature effects in both dry and wet seasons were taken into considerations using analysis and correlations. Computer simulations using Qbasic software were done with existing crude oil field data and graphical analyses were made from the output. Laboratory experiments were performed to generate primary data needed for model validation. The model was validated and found to give 60% prediction of spread than the existing models. The analysis of the empirical and the analytical results show a 5% variation with a correlation coefficient in the range of 0.9938-0.9999 and error limit of 0.05 depending on the three crude sample used. Because the model incorporated wind effects and temperature variation which others never considered it will be useful to Petroleum Industries and Eco-Engineers interested in combating oil spill and its early containment