A low drag oil spill recovery device has been developed to retain and recover floating oil slicks in currents up to 3.0 m/sec (6 knots) and low wave conditions typically encountered in small lakes and harbors, smooth flowing streams and other inland waterways. The streamlined oil boom/skimmer utilizes a slightly submerged slotted hydrofoil to skim a thin layer of oil and water into an attached sump where the kinetic energy of the high speed flow is dissipated and the oil and water are separated by gravity. The excess water is discarded and the oil is retained in the sump under conditions similar to a conventional low speed oil boom. The retained oil is recovered as required by a built-in secondary skimmer. Because of the system's simplicity and low drag, it can be deployed as a high speed skimmer supported by a catamaran or as high current boom with several adjacent sections spanning a high current area. The development effort focused on bow, sump and stability control system design and the testing of the complete streamlined oil boom system at OHMSETT. Thruput efficiencies as high as 99+ percent and 87 percent were measured under calm surface conditions at 2.0 and 3.0 m/sec (4 and 6 knots) respectively. Performance degraded in test with waves.

Prepared for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Industrial Environmental Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, Ohio ; submitted by Ultrasystems, Inc., under contract no. 68-03-0403. Includes bibliographical references (page 80).