| Oil spills in marine environments may cause significant damage to marine and coastal ecosystems if not recovered quickly and efficiently. Although mechanical recovery is the most commonly used oil spill response technique, it can be very time consuming and expensive when employed at a large scale due, to its low recovery rates.; The goal of this work was to optimize mechanical oil spill recovery for various environmental conditions by analyzing the recovery process and identifying parameters with the most significant impact on the recovery efficiency. As a result of this work, laboratory equipment and procedures tailored to the study of oil spill recovery at small scale were developed. A number of materials and surface patterns that can increase the adhesion skimmer recovery efficiency up to three times were identified and tested in a full scale oil spill recovery study. |
