Oil drops from underwater oil spills can break into tinier droplets at the surface that remain suspended in the water, according to research from the University of Illinois Chicago.
Oil drops from underwater oil spills can break into tinier droplets at the surface that remain suspended in the water, according to research from the University of Illinois Chicago. That means cleanups after disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill may be removing less oil from the environment than was thought.
Because oil is lighter than water, it rises through the ocean after spills, which are usually caused by leaking underwater pipelines or sometimes by natural processes. It was believed that when these oil drops reached the water’s surface, they simply turned into a flat film, forming an oil slick.
A UIC team led by Sushant Anand was the first to look more deeply into the mechanics of how oil goes from being a drop to a slick, and they discovered a different pattern. They found that when oil drops reach the water’s surface, they remain partially submerged for awhile. When the thin film of water that covers the exposed part of the drop breaks, that part of the drop spreads across the water surface into a film. But the part of the drop that was below the surface deforms, breaking off into a smaller “daughter” drop. The process repeats with that smaller droplet, over and over. The research is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Read more at University of Illinois Chicago
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