Studies into the Initial Conditions, Flow Rate, and Containment System of Oil Field Leaks in Deep Water
Abstract
Oil well blow outs are investigated to determine methods to quickly and accurately respond to an emergency situation. Flow rate is needed to guide containment and dispersal operations. The Stratified Integral Multiphase Plume, SIMP, model was used to investigate the range of initial conditions available to integral modeling. Sensitivity to initial conditions is modest, but without experimental data at the appropriate scale the most accurate condition is unable to be determined. Flow rates are difficult to directly measure in blow out situations, so another method must be determined; therefore, sensitivity of several parameters to flow rate was also evaluated. Methane concentration in the first intrusion can be used in conjunction with velocity and trap height measurements to determine flow rate using an integral model. Plume width and temperature were determined to have little sensitivity. Separately, a containment dome was tested in the laboratory to determine if a full scale dome can be used to contain an oil leak in the field. The dome was found to have satisfactory entrapment in the designed position.
Subject
initial conditionscontainment dome
oil
leak
deep water
sensitivity
integral model
rachel holder
socolofsky
blow out
deepwater horizon
plume
multiphase
asaeda
imberger
morton
wuest
mcdougall
nondimensional
entrainment
zone of flow establishment
zfe
trap height
plume width
SIMP
Citation
Holder, Rachel (2013). Studies into the Initial Conditions, Flow Rate, and Containment System of Oil Field Leaks in Deep Water. Master's thesis, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /151119.