Mathematical Modeling and Forecasting the Spread of an Oil Spill using Python

Abstract

This is a comprehensive paper on the oil spill phenomenon on what mechanisms change the oil spill displacement, what Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) applications of Finite Volume and Eulerian/Lagragian equations are used to solve oil-spill simulations and to provide a brief analysis of the models used. An oil spill is defined as a form of pollution caused by human activity and as the discharge of liquid petroleum hydrocarbons into the environment, mainly in the marine eco-system. This description is commonly used for marine oil spills, where the hydrocarbons are discharged into the ocean or coastal waters, but they can also occur inland. Oil spills occur because of discharges of hydrocarbons from platforms, rigs, wells, tankers and from refined petroleum products along with their by-products, also from heavier fuels. Thus, oil spill simulation is used to predict transport and weathering processes. State-of-the-art tools such as OILMAP, TRANSAS, OILFLOW2D, OSCAR and ANSYS, work by simulating the processes mentioned prior. In contrary to these tools, the aim of this paper is to provide a comparison of the weathering models used and propose a mathematical model using python to predict the spreading phenomenon of an oil spill.