Design of a Low-cost Oil Spill Tracking Buoy

As the rapid development of oil exploitation and transportation, oil spill accidents, such as Prestige oil spill, Gulf of Mexico oil spill accident and so on, happened frequently in recent years which would result in long-term damage to the environment and human life. It would be helpful for rescue operation if we can locate the oil slick diffusion area in real time. Equipped with GNSS system, current tracking buoys(CTB), such as Lagrangian drifting buoy, Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifter, iSLDMB (Iridium self locating datum marker buoy) and Argosphere buoy, have been used as oil tracking buoy in oil slick observation and as validation tools for oil spill simulation. However, surface wind could affect the movement of oil slick, which couldn't be reflected by CTB, thus the oil spill tracking performance is limited. Here, we proposed an novel oil spill tracking buoy (OSTB) which has a low cost of less than $140 and is equipped with Beidou positioning module and sails to track oil slick. Based on hydrodynamic equilibrium model and ocean dynamic analysis, the wind sails and water sails are designed to be adjustable according to different marine conditions to improve tracking efficiency. Quick release device is designed to assure easy deployment from air or ship. Sea experiment was carried out in Jiaozhou Bay, Northern China. OSTB, SVP, iSLDMB, Argosphere buoy and a piece of oil-simulated rubber sheet were deployed at the same time. Meanwhile, oil spill simulation model GNOME (general NOAA operational modeling environment) was configured with the wind and current field, which were collected by an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) mounted with acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP) and wind speed and direction sensors. Experimental results show that the OSTB has better relevance with rubber sheet and GNOME simulation results, which validate the oil tracking ability of OSTB. With low cost and easy deployment, OSTB provides an effective way for oil spill numerical modeling validation and quick response to oil spill accidents.