You are here:
PERFORMANCE TESTING OF SELECTED SORBENT BOOMS
Citation:
Smith, G. PERFORMANCE TESTING OF SELECTED SORBENT BOOMS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/7-78/219.
Description:
Performance tests on three commercially available sorbent booms were conducted at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Oil and Hazardous Materials Simulated Environmental Test Tank (OHMSETT) test facility. Test variables included wave condition, tow speed, and quantity of oil encountered. The maximum no-oil-loss containment two speed was determined for each wave and oil quantity test condition. The no-oil-loss tow speed in calm water was consistently near 0.25 m/s, but in a 0.3-m harbor chop wave, this figure decreased to between 0.05 and 0.1 m/s. In the 0.3-m harbor chop wave, the failure mode was typically droplet shedding from the contained oil slick, whereas in calm water, the oil slick passed under the booms. No sorbed oil appeared to wash out of the booms when they were towed. When saturated boom sections were wrung out, the recovered fluid weighed from 9.5 to 14 times boom dry weight and was 16 to 50 percent oil.