TAVARES, D. P. S. A.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/2987641500506384; TAVARES, Daniela Passos Simões de Almeida.
Résumé:
The leak of toxic fluids in submarine pipes due to corrosion, erosion or failures
in the structure, generally lead to extensive damage to marine life, human health and
natural resources. When occurs an accidental leak, a quick and adequate response is
needed to reduce the environmental consequences. Therefore, understand, for example,
the behavior of leaked oil plume enables the determination of the oil plume path and the
dispersion of the same in the sea current and like this propose techniques and/or
technologies to eliminate or minimize the damage caused by the leak. In this sense, it
was proposed a study of the behavior of plume and its dispersion, adopting an EulerianEulerian
approach. It was used a representative mathematical model of the fluid
dynamics of an oil plume originated from leak at riser in catenary format. It was
adopted a two-phase flow (Free Surface Model), isothermal and turbulent (k-ε standard
model) to solve the mass and momentum conservation equations using ANSYS CFX®
v.15. The results of the pressure, velocity and volumetric fraction fields, and the
volumetric fraction profiles allowed the plume behavior assessment and dispersal at sea.
Also it was observed that the plume reaches the sea surface when adopted high
velocities of oil leak and low velocities of sea current. For the cases in which the oil
density is higher, there was lateral subsurface scattering. For the cases with higher
velocity of the oil jet and lower velocity of the sea water, in the arrival of the oil to the
surface it was observed that there was horizontal scattering upstream and downstream of
the direction of flow. Moreover, depending on conditions of the leak velocity, of the sea
current and of the density difference was noticed a tendency of the plume not reach the
sea surface.