The Measurement of Oil Spill Volume by a Passive Microwave Imager.
Abstract
An airborne passive microwave system has been developed and used in a test program to detect a marine oil spill and to determine its thickness and volume. A controlled spill of 2040 liters (538 gallons) of No. 2 fuel oil was conducted from a Coast Guard vessel 20 miles off the Virginia shore. Microwave images of the spill were obtained at both 22.4 and 31.0 GHz on five consecutive aircraft passes over the visible oil slick. Wind and weather conditions were moderate during the test. The microwave images were processed on a computer and shown on a color television display system. These color images revealed a small region of relatively thick oil, surrounded by a larger region of much thinner oil, in agreement with results from an earlier program. The thin oil region corresponded to the visible oil slick and showed up clearly in the color images against the unpolluted open sea. It is thus possible to outline the entire visible slick and locate the thick oil regions within it by means of a microwave image. Maximum oil thickness was approximately 0.6 mm in the thick region which was located on the downwind side of the visible slick. The oil spill volume was determined by integrating the oil thickness over area in the computer.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1977
- Accession Number
- ADA041821
Entities
People
- Ballard E. Troy Jr.
- James P. Hollinger
Organizations
- United States Naval Research Laboratory