Oil spillsLargest-ever simulation of the Deepwater Horizon spill

In a 600-ft.-long saltwater wave tank on the coast of New Jersey, a team of NJIT researchers is conducting the largest-ever simulation of the Deepwater Horizon spill to determine more precisely where hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil dispersed following the drilling rig’s explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Led by Michel Boufadel, director of NJIT’s Center for Natural Resources (CNR), the initial phase of the experiment involved releasing several thousand gallons of oil from a one-inch pipe dragged along the bottom of the tank in order to reproduce ocean current conditions.

“The facility at Ohmsett allows us to simulate as closely as possible the conditions at sea, and to thus observe how droplets of oil formed and the direction and distance they traveled,” Boufadel said.

Later this summer, his team will conduct the second phase of the experiment, when they will apply dispersants to the oil as it shoots into the tank to observe the effects on droplet formation and trajectory.

His team’s research, conducted at the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Ohmsett facility at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Leonardo, N.J., was detailed in a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“These experiments are the largest ever conducted by a university in terms of the volume of oil released and the scale,” he noted. “The data we obtained, which has not been published yet, is being used by other researchers to calibrate their models.”

The team expects to come away from these experiments with insights they can apply to a variety of ocean-based oil releases. 

“Rather than limiting ourselves to a forensic investigation of the Deepwater Horizon release, we are using that spill to explore spill scenarios more generally,” Boufadel said. “Our goal is not to prepare for the previous spill, but to broaden the horizons to explore various scenarios.”