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Collision of oil droplets with marine aggregates: Effect of droplet size
Author(s) -
Lambert Ruth A.,
Variano Evan A.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: oceans
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9291
pISSN - 2169-9275
DOI - 10.1002/2015jc011562
Subject(s) - marine snow , oil droplet , settling , collision , snow , radius , drop (telecommunication) , mechanics , volume fraction , shear (geology) , particle size , particle (ecology) , materials science , environmental science , chemistry , geology , meteorology , water column , physics , oceanography , composite material , environmental engineering , telecommunications , biochemistry , computer security , computer science , emulsion
Interactions between oil droplets and marine particle aggregates, such as marine snow, may affect the behavior of oil spills. Marine snow is known to scavenge fine particles from the water column, and has the potential to scavenge oil droplets in the same manner. To determine the degree to which such a process is important in the evolution of oil spills, we quantify the collision of oil droplets and marine aggregates using existing collision rate equations. Results show that interaction of drops and aggregates can substantially influence the drop size distribution, but like all such processes this result is sensitive to the local concentration of oil and aggregates. The analysis also shows that as the size distribution of oil droplets shifts toward larger droplets, a greater fraction of the total oil volume collides with marine aggregates. This result is robust to a variety of different assumptions in the collision model. Results also show that there is not always a dominant collision mechanism. For example, when droplets and aggregates are both close to 10 μm in radius, shear and differential settling contribute nearly equally to the collision rate. This overlap suggests that further research on the interaction of shear and differential settling could be useful.