Modelling of Oil Spill

Oil tanker accidents in seas cause serious problems to marine environment, especially when these accidents occur close to coastlines. To minimize the impact of tanker accidents on marine environment some measures might be taken if oil slick movement could be predicted in advance. Oil spill trajectory and fate models have been developed since the early 1960's to simulate oil movement on the water surface in order to take immediate action and some necessary measures after such accidents. Mediterranean Sea being among the world's busiest waterways is many times subject to oil spill accidents. In this connection a study has been carried out by giving special attention to Mersin coastlines. In this study, a 2-D Oil Spill Model has been developed and applied to Mersin Coastlines. The model is based on the 2-D oil spreading equation and considers horizontal dispersion, advection, diffusion, evaporation and shoreline deposition. Since evaporation process is the main cause of rapid volume reduction during the fate of oil spill, a special emphasize has been given to its modelling. Results obtained from the model have been compared to some known values cited from different studies on oil spill modelling. The comparison shows good conformity.