Oil Spill Dispersant Effectiveness Protocol. II: Performance of Revised Protocol
This article is a reply.
VIEW THE ORIGINAL ARTICLEPublication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 130, Issue 10
Abstract
The current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) protocol for testing the effectiveness of dispersants for use in treating oil spills on the open water, the swirling flask test (SFT), has been found to give widely varying results in the hands of different testing laboratories. Part I addressed the sources of the ambiguities in the EPA SFT and the development of a new test referred to as the baffled flask test (BFT). In this part of the series, further experiments were conducted for estimating the repeatability of three operators in determining the effectiveness of 18 dispersants by both the EPA SFT and the BFT methods. Overall statistical analysis of the results indicated that the coefficient of variation by the BFT was only 7.8% compared to 21.9% for the EPA SFT. The mean percent effectiveness of the EPA SFT was only 19.7% as compared to 64.6% for the BFT. Proposed selection criteria for screening of dispersants for listing on the National Contingency Plan Product Schedule have been developed.
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Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 130 • Issue 10 • October 2004
Pages: 1085 - 1093
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 ASCE.
History
Published online: Oct 1, 2004
Published in print: Oct 2004
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