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Autonomous water sampler for oil spill response
Citation:
Gomez-Ibanez, D., A. Kukulya, A. Belani, R. Conmy, D. Sundaravadivelu, AND L. DiPinto. Autonomous water sampler for oil spill response. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. MDPI, Basel, Switzerland, 10(4):526, (2022). https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10040526
Impact/Purpose:
This paper summarizes the development of a novel AUV water/oil sampling system for deep water oil spills. The development was led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and tested at natural oil seeps in California. The collected samples were analyzed for hydrocarbons at EPA ORD AWBERC using standard methods. The only EPA-generated data corresponds to those collected samples. The only EPA author is Robyn Conmy. The authorship is below: Daniel Gomez-Ibanez 1*, Amy Kukulya 1, Abhimanyu Belani 1, Erin Fischell 1, Robyn Conmy 2, Devi 4 Sundaravadivelu 3 and Lisa DiPinto 4 1 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA 2 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Cincinnati, OH 45268, USA 2 Pegasus Technical Services, Inc., Cincinnati, OH 45219, USA 4 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA * Correspondence: dgi@whoi.edu
Description:
A newly developed water sampler allows rapid autonomous detection and sampling of underwater hydrocarbon plumes. The new modular sampler collects multiple 1-liter samples of seawater, when preset criteria are met, during autonomous surveys of underwater hydrocarbon plumes. The sampler has a hydrocarbon-free sample path and can be configured with multiple six-packs of glass sample bottles. In August 2019, the sampler was deployed on a REMUS 600 AUV and captured targeted water samples in natural oil seeps offshore Santa Barbara, California, USA.
