In the Gulf of Mexico, many methods were both suggested and tried to stop the leak on Deepwater Horizon. Remotely operated underwater vehicles were used to close the blowout preventer valves on the well head. A containment dome was placed over the leak. Heavy drilling fluids were pumped into the blow-out preventer. Capturing the leaking oil and storing it in barrels was also attempted.
Several methods are available to clean up the oil once the spill or leak has occurred: biological agents, dispersants which act as detergents, and booms to reduce the pollution of shorelines.
As well as stopping oil leaks and spills and cleaning them up, detection methods are also important. You can visually see some oil spills but increasingly remote sensing by satellites is used for detection with techniques such as synthetic aperture radar being used.
Inspec covers many of the aspects of oil pollution control. Listed below are thesaurus terms and classification codes that would be useful when searching for the various aspects.
Inspec Thesaurus terms
- Crude oil
- Detergents
- Disasters
- Marine accidents
- Marine pollution
- Mater pollution measurement
- Mobile robots
- Offshore installations
- Oil drilling
- Oil pollution
- Oil technology
- Remotely operated vehicles
- Remote sensing by radar
- Synthetic aperture radar
- Telerobotics
- Underwater vehicles
- Valves
