Abstract
Containment boom is the most common type of containment device used to prevent oil from spreading on water in the event of an oil spill. Booms are successful in collecting oil on water for recovery but their performance is not the same in every case. Booms fail to retain oil under certain circumstances. This boom failure occurs by several modes of which Drainage and Entraimnent are the common modes of boom failure. This phenomenon of Boom Drainage which causes a boom to fail is the focus of this thesis and has been explained. It is also differentiated from Entrainment ( the other mode of boom failure ). This is accomplished by means of both visual aids and text. Further, a mathematical model developed in 1969, which is a comprehensive work, and uses mathematical equations and design charts to explain the phenomena of Boom drainage as well as Entraimnent is evaluated. This mathematical model is critically analyzed to test for its validity. This is done by comparing the results of this mathematical model to other literature citations. From this analysis it was concluded that Wicks' mathematical model is a valuable piece of literature and is a comprehensive work, but certain discrepancies and gaps were found to exist which need further explanation. Several techniques for minimizing the loss of oil under the boom like forward positioning of boom skirt, optimum skirt depth, deployment of boom at an angle, holding two booms together and use of absorbents are also discussed.
Manihar, Nikita (1998). Boom Drainage: revisited. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1998 -THESIS -M36.