ABSTRACT
When an oil spill occurs, it is important to predict the fate of the spill for planning a proper response. The purpose of this chapter is to provide some simple and semi-analytical models developed in the past two decades for estimating oil vaporization, sedimentation, and dissolution in water for both crude oil and its products. The models are based on a characterization scheme which divides the oil into a number of pseudocomponents with known specifications as discussed in Chapter 2 and on the modeling of the dynamic processes of vaporization and dissolution of oil as well as the sedimentation process. The area of the oil slick, and its thickness, as well as the concentration of mono- and polyaromatic hydrocarbons can also be estimated at any time. The models have been applied to several oil samples of Kuwaiti oil in the Persian Gulf as well as to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that occurred in 2010. Specifications of oil such as mass or volumetric flow rate, oil specific gravity, or boiling data, as well as air temperature and wind speed are the required input parameters for these models.
