PAJ International Oil Spill Symposium 2003

Recovery Devices and Pumping Techniques for High Viscosity Oil Spills
Flemming Hvidbak
flemingCo environmental
Ajstrup Mosevej 8
DK 9381 Sulsted, Aalborg
Denmark
consult@flemingCo.dk
Abstract
Numerous spills over the years have demonstrated that mechanical response to high viscosity oil
spills at sea is less than successful. After the 10,000 m3 ERIKA Spill in France, less than 5% wasrecovered before the oil reached the coast. The weather played an important role, but the selectionof equipment and apparent response strategy did as well. Mainly weir skimmers were used.
Weir skimmers are due to their simplicity and reliability widely used in spills at sea. Probably
because some of the well known brands are equipped with heavy oil transfer pumps, they are evencommonly attempted used in heavy oil spills. But also high capacity units with light oil centrifugaltransfer pumps are being used on heavy oil (ERIKA). However, weir skimmers start losing theirefficiency when the viscosity of the oil exceeds certain limits. It gets too difficult for the oil to pass
the weir lip and flow into the hopper, so that the pump can transfer it. For very heavy oils, whichbarely can float, the inlet weir becomes an even larger obstruction.
A mechanical feeder skimmer lifts or drags the oil out of the water to a position above the water
surface, and feeds or drops it into a collection tank or a transfer pump. The mechanical feeder
principle may result in significantly increased performance regarding high viscosity, debris, and - inmost cases - low water content.
Tank tests at SAIC/Environment Canada’s test facility in Ottawa, Canada, sponsored by the
Canadian Coast Guard, and tank tests since 1999 carried out by flemingCo, under contract withPDVSA/Bitor, have demonstrated that floating bitumen in the viscosity range of 2 to 3 million cSt
could be recovered by several mechanical feeder skimmers, while a “high viscosity” weir skimmer
had no effect. This puts the ERIKA Spill’s viscosity of 200,000 cSt, the Baltic Carrier’s 500,000
cSt, and the Prestige Spill’s 320,000 cSt into perspective, and strongly point at mechanical feeder
skimmers in the preparedness for heavy oil spills.
However, the same tests clearly demonstrated that the transfer pumps in the skimmers
had difficulties transferring the extremely viscous product from pump inlet to pump discharge;
meaning that feeding the product into the pump inlet showed difficult and/or the pressure/friction
losses inside the pump itself could barely be overcome. It was therefore deemed necessary to test
existing and newly developed techniques, which might improve these pumps’ ability to transfer
high to extreme viscosity oil.
This presentation will document that there as of today are skimming and pumping equipment andtechniques available, which can be efficiently used in response to spills of even very viscous oil.

Discussion
Mechanical response to oil spills at sea has always had its limitations. Rarely has as much as 30%of the spilled volume been recovered. Overall effectiveness rates of mechanical recovery on-water
generally range from 15% to 35%, depending upon incident-specific conditions (US Congress,
Office of Technology Assessment, 1990). However, these percentages are according to ITOPF andother organizations too high. After the ERIKA spill, Dec. 12, 1999 off the coast of Brittany, France,
where about 10,000 m3 of heavy fuel oil spilled into the ocean, less than 5% was recovered at sea
before the oil reached the coast (CEDRE/OSIR, 1999).
A best situation average of about 30% recovered at sea after an oil spill may not sound like a lot,
but when compared to the costs involved in cleaning a coast line, which has been severely polluted
by sticky and viscous oil emulsion, even 20-30 % do matter a lot. Cleaning, disposal, andcompensation for damages to property may result in astronomic costs: In the US about USD 20,000
per m3 heavy crude is the average figure for cleanup and disposal only, while up to about USD
94,000 per m3 , as in the case of “Exxon Valdez”, can be the tab to pick up (Etkin, 2000) for cleanup
and disposal. Add to this the costs of damage to property and environment!
Therefore it requires very little imagination to realize how feasible - environmentally andeconomically - it is to recover as much as possible before an oil spill at sea causes massive pollutionof the coast lines or other environmentally sensitive areas. As the following will explain further,mechanical recovery of heavy oil spills can be more successful than past statistics and recent spill
responses will let us know – provided the right equipment is being used.

Recovery of High to Extreme Viscosity Oil
Although weir skimmers with positive displacement screw pumps may have some effect as long as
the heavy oil as lumps (including a large amount of water) flow into the hopper, these skimmers
will face problems with larger concentrations and layers of oil when the viscosity reaches 3040,000 cSt. The oil will have difficulties floating over the inlet weir and into the hopper (Fig. 1).
Therefore a number of mechanical feeder skimmers have been tested for the recovery of high toextreme viscosity oil. Bitumen was used since the tests were carried out in relation to the special
properties of spilled Orimulsion, which develops to bitumen if it is mechanically refloated after aspill in sea water (Hvidbak and Masciangioli, 2000).
A mechanical feeder skimmer lifts or drags - by means of more than just adhesion - the oil out of
the water to a position above the water surface, and feeds or drops it into a collection tank or atransfer pump. The lifting/feeding can for instance be by belts, brushes, rotating net drums, counterrotating drums, “corn elevators”, or rotating toothed discs.
Common to all these methods is that they are able to drag the oil out of the water, based on
combinations of adhering, grabbing, trapping, and squeezing, dependent of type in question.
Adhesion is a major success factor. In some cases adhesion will positively influence performance,
while strong adhesion will negatively influence the performance of others.

Mechanical Feeder Skimmers, which Have Been Tank Tested on Refloated Bitumen
Since 1999, flemingCo has tank tested a number of mechanical feeder skimmers on mechanicallyrefloated bitumen. These tests, and tests in 1999 at SAIC/Environment Canada’s test facility inOttawa, Canada have demonstrated that floating bitumen with a viscosity of 2 - 3 million cSt canbe recovered by a number of different types of mechanical feeder skimmers.
Tested by flemingCo at manufacturers’ facilities in Kalmar Sweden, June 1999 (Hvidbak, 1999):
The KLK 602 skimmer, a product of KLK in Sweden, marketed by SEAGULL ENVIRONMENT
AS, Billingstad, Norway. It operates by twin counter rotating drums with positive guides, which lift
and pressure-scraper feed the oil into an auger placed above water level, parallel with the drums,
which further feeds into a screw pump.
The Unisep skimmer, a product of Unisep AB, Kalmar, Sweden. It works (larger versions) by arotating expanded metal net drum, a “snail’s shell”, which for each revolution grabs a rectangularsection of the in-flowing oil, and feeds it – by the concentrating geometry of the expanded metal
drum and a scraper – into an auger placed above water level, parallel with the drum, which further
feeds the oil into a pump. The water escapes via the holes in the stretch metal.
Tested at SAIC/Environment Canada’s test facility in Ottawa with flemingCo participation
November 1999 (Cooper and Hvidbak, 2000):
The ERE skimmer, a Product of Environment Recovery Equipment, Inc., Port Colborne, Ontario,
Canada. The ERE Oriliminator skimmer incorporates an open meshed stainless steel belt with asquare honey-comb structure. As the belt rotates, oil is forced down at the oil/water interface and istrapped between the belt and a polyethylene support plate, which effectively squeezes the oil into
the mesh structure. The belt rests on this plate until it meets a roller inside the belt bank, which has
protruding knobs that match the openings in the mesh. As the oil saturated belt moves up androtates past the roller, the knobs force the oil out of the mesh and a scraping mechanism carries theoil away from the belt.
The Axiom HOBS, Heavy Oil Belt Skimmer, a special one-design by the Canadian Coast Guard.
The HOBS unit incorporates an inclined conveyor type belt with short 10 mm long bristles on its
upper surface to collect oil at the water/oil interface. The skimmer is large and extends to overall
dimensions of approximately 5.2m x 1.7m x 2.0m (LWH) and weighs approximately 770kg. The
belt lifts the oil up off the surface and carries it to the top of the unit, where a scraper with arelatively soft rubber edge forces the oil to drop off. The oil collects in a trough, which diverts theoil to an opening, gravity feeding into a final container or a pump.
The KLK 602 Twin Drum Skimmer as described earlier.
Tested by flemingCo at manufacturer’s facility in Aalborg, Denmark, February 2001 (Hvidbak,
2001):The DESMI Belt Skimmer, marketed by Ro-Clean DESMI A/S, Odense, Denmark. This inclined
belt skimmer incorporates a conveyor belt type consisting of many small fiber plastic links withcatch plates. It has like the ERE a support plate beneath the belt, which holds the oil at the belt on
its way to the scraper. On high to extreme viscosity oil the belt rotation must be reversed so that the
belt rotates down water an up, thus bringing the oil up on its upper surface.

Tested by flemingCo at manufacturer’s facility in Porvoo, Finland, June 2002 (Hvidbak, 2002):
The LAMOR/LORI Brush Belt Skimmer, manufactured by LAMOR, Porvoo, Finland. This brushbelt skimmer incorporated a 1.6 m long brush belt bank with 5 separate brush belts, each. approx.
100 mm wide. The belt bank was manufactured specially for the test, i.e. with brackets for
mounting on the end wall of the test tank, and with no floats mounted. No transfer pump was
mounted, the recovered product was scraped off the brushes and delivered back into the test tank. In
a later test the skimmer had been equipped with a heated hopper, which guided the recovered
bitumen from the scraper into the Lamor GT-175 transfer pump with inlet side steam injection.
?
In addition to these tests, a Tar Hawg Inclined Belt Skimmer (same as Grizzly), USA, was tested at
an offshore Orimulsion spill test in Venezuela in 1996 by PDVSA/Bitor with CCG and USCG in
attendance (Deis, et. al., 1997).
All the tests have been carried out under almost the same conditions with a product temperature of
15 ?C, except for the Kalmar test where the temperature was about 18 ?C. The bitumen layer was
30 mm thick and the skimmers were used in static mode except for the SAIC/Environment Canada
tests, where a flow could be induced towards the skimmers. It was in all tests visually observed how
well each skimmer could grab and lift the bitumen off the water surface and how efficiently it could
scrape it off.
Despite differences in performance, all the tested skimmers could recover the extremely viscousbitumen. Nearly all skimmers had to have minor modifications made in order to handle theextremely viscous and sticky product (mainly higher torque hydraulic motors). All seven skimmers
are shown in Figure 2 and the viscosity vs. temperature curve for refloated bitumen is shown in
Figure 3.
Mechanical Feeder Skimmers with Potential, Not Yet Tested on Bitumen1
Based on the results of the bitumen skimming tests and many years experience from within the “oilspill recovery industry” the following skimmer types are expected to have potential in response to
spills of high to extreme viscosity oil (Fig. 4):?? MARCO Filterbelt Skimmer. Product of MARCO Pollution Control, Seattle, USA.
?? Egmopol “corn elevator type” skimmer. Product of S.E.P. Egmo, Brest, France.
?? Sea Devil toothed disc skimmer. Product of Vikoma Ltd., Isle of Wight, UK.
?? Sea Wolf, toothed disc clamshell type skimmer. Product of Vikoma Ltd., Isle of Wight,
UK (not shown).
?? Hiwax, twin drum skimmer w. dynamic driving plates. Product of Frank Mohn, Bergen,
Norway.
Important Efficiency Parameters for a Mechanical Feeder Skimmer
The skimmer must be able to grab the oil and actively bring it to a position above the water surface.
So the grabbing capability is a very important parameter. But once the oil is above water, it is as1

Disclaimer: This selection has been made based on the authors general knowledge to the market and theequipment listed, but it does not necessarily present a complete picture of the equipment types, which could
have this potential.

important that it can be scraped off and be directed into a transfer pump or a storage tank. Several
parameters will influence the skimmer’s ability to grab the oil:?? Wave action?? The presence of debris?? The viscous oil’s access to the skimming device?? The direction of rotation of the belt, brush, drum, or disc?? The vertical extent of the active grabbing zone?? Open or closed structure of skimming device?? Device fixed to a barge or a vessel, device free-floating, or device built into the hull ofa vessel?? Inertia mass and buoyancy arrangement (free-floating)
The weather – and thereby the waves – plays an important role in response to oil spills at open sea.
The before mentioned tests were all tank tests with no wave action and no advancing mode. It istherefore strongly recommended that further testing on high to extreme viscosity oil be continued ina testing environment, which, with advancing mode in waves, better will resemble real world
conditions.
Debris is an often overseen problem in oil spill response. The skimming device must be designed sothat most floating debris immediately will be brought away from the recovery zone and be removed
manually or be automatically separated and disposed of. Only in this way free in-flow of viscous oil
to the recovery device can be secured.
The skimming device must be designed so that the construction itself does not form an obstruction
for the oil’s free in-flow.
The direction of rotation of a skimming device can either be down into the water, picking up the oilon its way up, or down into the oil, moving the oil down water and up. The first type of rotation
creates a water pumping effect, which will tend to push the oil away from the skimming device,while the second actively will drag the oil towards the device.
The vertical extent of the active recovery zone is very important in waves. If the zone is too short,the oil may part of the time be either above or under the recovery zone of the skimming device.
An open structure of the skimming device will facilitate water and oil in-flow to the skimming
device and will reduce the negative influence of wave action provided the active recovery zone ishigh enough. A closed structure (for instance a solid belt) will tend to work against nature bypushing or splashing the oil away from the skimming device when being moved up and down by
waves. Further it will not allow for a free in-flow of oil and water, especially not if the direction ofrotation further complicates this.
A skimming device can be brought to use in many ways. It may seem convenient to mount it on the
bow of a vessel or a barge, but then the vessel’s movements in the waves will force the device inand out of the oil/water causing severe disturbance to the in-flow of oil. This effect can besomewhat reduced by mounting the skimmer on the side of the vessel, amidships. The device canalso be free-floating, having its own buoyancy, which may be a convenient solution for lighter oils
and in relatively calm sea, but in bad weather and/or heavy oil it may be difficult to operate andthere may be a safety problem involved in deployment and recovery of the unit. Thrusters mounted
on the skimmer may to some extent facilitate the ability of this skimmer type to move to and into
the oil. However, the most optimal solution with respect to sweeping speed, waves, and safety is tocirculate the collected oil through a wide and unobstructed channel inside the response vessel where
the skimming device can operate in a protected and controlled environment (Fig. 5).
The inertia mass and buoyancy arrangementof a free-floating skimming device are otherimportant success factors. The inertia mass must be as low as possible and the center of gravity
must be kept as close as possible to the center of the skimmer. The buoyancy must be sufficient andbe placed so that the device rapidly will follow the wave movements. For free-floating mechanicalfeeder skimmers it is extremely important that the reserve buoyancy is big enough to handle both
the wave action and the weight of the recovered product, while it is on its way to be scraped off andbe pump transferred to the response vessel.

Other approaches to recovery of high to extreme viscosity oil
Crane grabs and backhoes
These types of equipment are conveniently located in many countries since they are very common
within the construction industry. They have in many cases been the solution when most of thededicated oil spill response equipment failed on heavy oil (Baltic Carrier spill), and especially when
the heavy oil is severely debris-laden (Natuna Sea spill). Their downside is that they will only work
under calm conditions and that the recovery rate may be relatively small, severely decreasing withincreasing adhesiveness of the oil.
Oil trawls
Oil trawls are used for recove ry of floating tar balls, slicks of heavy fuel oil, oil contaminated debris,
residual tar after oil burns, and bitumen residues from Orimulsion spills.
Oil trawls have, like mechanical feeder skimmers in tests and incidents (Erika and Natuna Sea
spills), proved to be able to recover even very viscous oils. In tests (Clement et al., 1997) the oil
trawls have demonstrated recovery of extremely viscous floating bitumen. But there may belogistical problems in terms of handling and emptying the full recovery socks and an issue relating
to cost as to whether they should be regarded as “disposable”. In the Erika spill, two fishing vessels
using nets recovered about 8 m3 of the very viscous oil in two days, but the nets were too difficult
to empty and clean and had to be disposed of.
An oil trawl system consists of the guide booms, the entrance net, and the detachable trawl bags. It
can be very rapidly deployed with only small work boats. No hydraulic power or heavy mechanicalequipment is required - only a simple air blower for inflation of the guide booms, or even less if
foam filled booms are used.
Two of the more well known brands are the ScanTrawl and the Jackson Trawl.

High Viscosity Pump Transfer
No skimmer is better than its transfer pump, unless it can scrape off the recovered oil directly into atank. So, it is in most cases not enough to evaluate the skimming device itself. The transfer pump ortransfer system must be evaluated as well.
Two of the most widely used heavy oil transfer pumps in the oil spill industry – the DOP-250 and
the GT-185 – were tested in two of the previously mentioned tests on 2-3 million cSt bitumen andboth had difficulties transferring the extremely viscous product from pump inlet to pump discharge.
It was therefore deemed necessary to test existing and new flow enhancing techniques which might
improve the ability of these pumps to transfer bitumen. Unless the problems could be overcome, alarge number of otherwise capable mechanical feeder skimmers could be considered unsuitable in
the preparedness for spills of high to extreme viscosity oil. Heating was an obvious option, but
might not always apply, or might not in itself be sufficient. Various methods of water injection
lubrication of bitumen had to be tested.
The ongoing series (since 1999) of high viscosity oil pumping tests, sponsored by the US Coast
Guard and the US Navy (Moffat, 1999), and from 2002 also the Canadian Coast Guard, aim todevelop methods of efficient emergency high viscosity pumping and to prepare educational material
for responders, so that there finally can be put an end to the long history of spill response
difficulties due to problems with high viscosity oil transfer. Results available as of January, 2003,
show a factor 10 - 12 reduction in pressure drop, when pumping 13,000 to 27,000 cSt heavy fuel oil
through a 400 m long 6” transfer hose, aided by water lubrication via an annulus water injection
flange (AWIF) on the discharge side of the pump.
No results were available detailing the effect of water lubrication applied either at the pump inlet, orboth before and after the pump. The history behind positioning the AWIF after the pump is thatmainly centrifugal pump transfer systems have been used in the emergency offloading industry.
These pumps observe, at a relatively small increase in viscosity, a severe decrease in efficiency.
Water lubrication has been able to enhance the efficiency of these pumps, but only by placing the
AWIF after and a little away from the pump, because turbulence would otherwise mix the oil andwater. This mixing could emulsify the added water into the oil, hence creating higher viscosity
emulsion and further decreasing efficiency.
Positive displacement Archimedes’ screw pumps like the DESMI, Foilex, and GT are far lesssensitive to higher viscosity oil. But when the pressure drop – due to friction in the discharge line –eventually exceeds the maximum pressure of the pump, these pumps must decrease transfer
capacity to avoid damage to hoses, pump, or hydraulic motor. Therefore the screw pumps will also
benefit from water lubrication. But for these pumps the above mentioned reasons for positioning the
AWIF after the pump do not apply; there is no turbulence after the pump, and there will be noemulsification inside the pump if water is added before the pump.
On very high viscosity oil - and especially on bitumen of extreme viscosity - the friction losses
inside the screw pump will significantly influence its overall performance. There will be limited
benefit of water lubrication after the pump if the pump itself is the obstruction. By applying thewater injection before the pump, some of these difficulties might be overcome while still
maintaining the benefit of the water lubrication in the discharge line.

An inlet lube flange – for injection of both cold water and steam/hot water into the DESMI DOP250 pump intake – was designed as a consequence of these considerations.

Extreme Viscosity Pump Transfer Tests
In a test at DESMI’s test facility in Aalborg, Denmark in 2001, sponsored by PDVSA/Bitor(Hvidbak, 2001), cold bitumen with a bulk temperature of 14 – 15°C (> 3 million cSt) wastransferred, using a DOP-250 pump equipped with a flemingCo designed inlet side steam / hotwater injection system (Figures 6 and 7). The product was pumped through a 20 m (66 ft) long 6”
hose at a rate of 45 m3/h (198 USgpm). The injection system incorporates an injection flange(AWIF), distribution hoses, a distribution manifold, and hook-up for a steam cleaner (Figure 8).
This was a break-through in extreme viscosity pumping, which was further cemented when asimilar test was carried out at SAIC Canada/Environment Canada’s test facility in Ottawa, where a
GT-185 transfer pump was tested with flemingCo designed inlet- and outlet steam/hot water
lubrication devices (Figure 8) (Cooper, et. al., 2002).
The test, which was sponsored by the Canadian Coast Guard, demonstrated that the modified GTpump could transfer 2-3 million cSt bitumen at a rate of 13.9 m3 /h (61 USgpm) through 12 m (40 ft)
of 4” hose. This was a 40 times performance improvement when compared to the baseline test,
where only 1.07 m3/h (4.7 USgpm) could be pumped through 3.6 m (12 ft) of 4” hose without any
steam or hot water injection.
It was at the Danish test further observed that heating the bitumen from 15 to 30 ?C was sufficient
for an operational pumping capacity without the aid of water lubrication.
Since these tests were carried out, a new positive displacement Archimedes’ screw pump has beendeveloped. As a result of LAMOR’s acquisition of GT Pollution Control in 2002 it was decided todesign a pump to replace the old GT-185 design from 1981. The new pump is in vertical design likea DOP pump but develops a slightly higher pressure and has as standard a built in flemingCo type
inlet side steam/hot water injection system. This pump and its steam injection system has beentested on bitumen in-house at LAMOR in Finland as transfer pump on a brush belt skimmer. The
viscosity was about 3 million cSt and the pump could match up with the skimmer and transfer therecovered product through the discharge hose – fully water lubricated.
The new flow enhancing techniques for the pump transfer of extremely viscous bitumen have not
only made bitumen emergency transfer pumping operational, but have also already been
incorporated into several applications of emergency pump transfer of conventional high viscosity
oil. In 2002 it was used in the unloading of highly viscous oil from the sunken world war 2 vessel
Luckenbach off the coast of California. In 2003 the inlet side injection system will be tested at thenext Joint US and Canadian Coast Guard Viscous Oil Pumping System (JVOPS) workshop in USA.
Oils of 200,000 cSt and 500,000 - 1 million cSt will be the targets for long distance testing. All the
positive displacement Archimedes’ screw pump in the market will be tested with their respective
flow enhancing techniques.
Both ERE, LAMOR, and DESMI deliver off-the-shelf mechanical feeder skimmers, where thetransfer pump is equipped with inlet or outlet side steam/hot water injection, and ERE and LAMOR
have optional heating of all surfaces leading the viscous oil to the pump.

Conclusion
It was a surprise to the author that so many existing mechanical feeder skimmer designs were able
to pick up and scrape off the extremely viscous bitumen of 2 – 3 million cSt, with no or only few
modifications required to the equipment. Some even had an impressive performance. This is
promising for the potentially capable skimmers that have not yet been tested at these highviscosities.
When the development and implementation of the new flow enhancing techniques are added in, it issafe to conclude that as of today there are known and tested techniques and equipment available forresponders, which can be applied in response to high and extreme viscosity oil spills.
Tests have shown that there are standard off-the-shelf equipment available that can recover evenvery viscous oil and that the oil can be transferred at an operational rate once it has been recovered.
Response organizations, which could face responding to spills of high viscosity oil, should therefore
consider acquiring the necessary equipment besides what they already have and should make thenecessary modifications to existing equipment. In this way – and by carrying out the necessary
training – the preparedness for coming spills of high viscosity oil may result in significantly betteroverall effectiveness rates than we have witnessed in the past few years.

Biography
Flemming Hvidbak is an oil spill consultant who has been in the industry for 19 years. He has
specialized in developing and testing response techniques and equipment for spills of heavy andextreme viscosity oil. Presently he serves as technical director for the coming joint US Coast Guard,
Canadian Coast Guard, and Industry viscous oil pumping system tests in the United States, 2003.

References(in order of appearance)

US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1990. “Coping With an Oiled Sea: An Analysis of
Oil Spill Response Technologies”. OTA-BP-O-63. US Government Printing Office, Washington
DC., 70p., 1990.
OSIR (Oil Spill Intelligence Report), citing CEDRE 1999. (Center of Documentation, Research,and Experimentation on Accidental Water Pollution) Vol. XXII, Nos. 50 and 51, 1999.
Etkin, D.S., Environmental Research Consulting, 2000. “Worldwide Analysis of Marine Oil Spill
Cleanup Cost Factors”, Proceedings of the 23rd Arctic and Marine Oilspill Program TechnicalSeminar, AMOP 2000, Environment Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 2000, pp. 161-174.
Hvidbak, F., flemingCo, Masciangioli, P., INTEVEP, 2000 “The Development and Test of
Equipment for Rapid Reflotation of Spilled Orimulsion®”. Proceedings of the AMOP 2000
technical seminar.
Hvidbak, F., flemingCo, 1999. “Projects for the Detection and Recovery of Spilled Orimulsion®,
Evaluation of the UNISEP and KLK Skimmers”, Bitor America Corporation report, 1999.

Cooper, D., SAIC Canada, Hvidbak, F., flemingCo, 2000. “Evaluation of Mechanical Recovery
Devices for Spills of Orimulsion®”, SAIC Technical Report, 2000.
Moffatt, C., GPC, US Coast Guard and US Navy, 1999. “Testing of the U. S. Coast Guard
Viscous Oil Pumping System (VOPS Prototype) at the MMS OHMSETT Test
Facility, Earle, NJ, November 1999”.
Hvidbak, F. flemingCo, 2001, “The Development and Test of Techniques for Emergency Transfer
of Extreme Viscosity Oil”, Proceedings of the AMOP 2001 technical seminar.
Hvidbak, F., flemingCo, 2002. “Test and Evaluation of the LAMOR Brush Belt Skimmer on 3+
million cSt Bitumen”, Bitor technical report, 2002
Deis, D.R., Garcia, N.G., Masciangioli, P., Villoria, C., Jones, M.A., Ortega, G.F., Lee, G.R., 1997,“Orimulsion® Research and Testing and Open Water Containment and Recovery Trials”,
Proceedings of the 1997 International Oil Spill Conference.
Clement, F., CEDRE, Gunter, P., Bitor Europe Ltd., Oland, D., OSRL, 1997. “Trials of Recovery
and Cleanup Techniques on Bitumen Derived from Orimulsion®”, Proceedings of the 1997
International Oil Spill Conference, pp. 89-93, IOSC, Washington, DC, 1997.
Cooper, D., SAIC Canada, Hvidbak, F., flemingCo, Mitchell, T., Breco Innovation, 2000,“Pumping Extremely Viscous Oil Using a Modified GT-185”, SAIC Technical Report, 2000.

P

Wor ks well - Light to medium oil and weir lip in cor r ect position

P

Water penetr ates oil layer - Viscosity too high or pump speed too highP

Weir lip stops oil - Viscosity too high or weir lip position too highFigure 1

Free-floating Weir Skimmer and Heavy High Viscosity Oil

ERE Inclined Belt Skimmer

Axiom HOBS Skimmer

Tar Hawg Skimmer

Unisep Net Drum Skimmer

LAMOR Brush Belt Skimmer

DESMI Belt Skimmer

KLK 602 Twin Drum Skimmer
Figure 2

Mechanical Feeder Skimmers, which Have Been Tank Tested on Bitumen

VISCOSITY vs TEMPERATURE
PURE BITUMEN AND BITUMEN RECOVERED FROMORIMULSION SPILL
10000000

y = 1E+12x-4,5355

2

R = 0,9968

VISCOSITY (cp)1000000

NOTES:
PURE BITUMEN REFERS TO
THE BITUMEN USED TO
MANUFACTURE ORIMULSIONVISCOSITY OF BITUMEN RECOVEREDFROM ORIMULSION SPILL IS THE
APPARENT VISCOSITY EVALUATED
AT A SHEAR RATE OF 25 1/s, SINCE THISFLUID IS PSEUDOPLASTIC, HIGHER
VISCOSITY ARE FOUND FOR SMALL
SHEAR RATES

10000010000

BITUMEN RECOVERED FROMORIMULSION SPILL
PURE BITUMEN

1000

Potencial (BITUMEN RECOVERED FROMORIMULSION SPILL)

100
0

20

40

60

80

TEMPERATURE (°C)
Please note that for densities close to 1, cP is approx. the same as cSt

Figure 3

Viscosity vs. Temperature for Refloated Bitumen and for Neat Bitumen

100Egmopol ”Corn Elevator” Belt Skimmer
Marco Filter Belt Skimmer

Vikoma Sea Devil Toothed Disc Skimmer

Figure 4

Framo Hiwax Twin Drum Skimmer with
Dynamic Driving Plates

Mechanical Feeder Skimmers with Bitumen Potential, Not Yet Tested

Figure 5

LAMOR/LORI In-hull Canal Skimming System

Figure 6 Cold bitumen, 33 m3 /h @ 9 bar, 20
m discharge hose, injection is on but nowater lubrication yet

Figure 7, Cold bitumen, 45 m3 /h @ 2 bar,
20 m hose, water lubrication in full effect.
Note the non sticky snake jumping up!

Figure 8 DOP Pump with flemingCo Inlet
Side Steam/Hot Water Injection System

Figure 9 GT-185 Pump w. flemingCo Inletand Outlet Side Steam/Hot Water Injection
System