Spill Tools is a collection of three tools you can use to assess how effectively you can recover, remove, or disperse spilled oil using
Spill Tools was designed to help you to complete tasks like
Spill Tools was designed especially for members of Area Committees (defined under the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan), who need to prepare "local area plans" for responding to potential oil spills in a particular geographic area (such as Puget Sound or San Francisco Bay). Area Committee members can use Spill Tools to find out how to effectively deploy the various response resources available to them, in the event of a spill.
You can use the Mechanical Equipment Calculator to estimate the rates at which mechanical equipment, such as skimmers, can recover oil from a specified slick. By adjusting the information you type into the Calculator, you can see how reconfiguring your skimmer operation might affect how quickly you could recover oil.
You can use the Dispersant Mission Planner to calculate how much dispersant you would need to apply to completely treat a specified amount of oil, given a particular dispersant-to-oil ratio (the photo below shows dispersant being applied from a vessel). To use the planner, you need estimates of the thickness and area of the oil slick.
You can use the In-situ Burn Calculator to estimate
You can make predictions either for oil already spilled on the water ("batch mode"), or for oil that is continuing to spill ("continuous mode"). In batch mode, the boom encounter rate (the rate at which the boom entraps oil) depends on oil slick thickness, swath width, and tow speed (relative to the water). In continuous mode, the boom encounter rate is estimated from the source release rate, the tow speed, and the speed of the current relative to the source of the oil. For both modes, the In-situ Burn Calculator predicts the performance of one U configuration of fire boom. (A U configuration is a length of fire resistant boom connected to a towing vessel at each end by a bridle.) In batch mode, the calculator predicts the number of burns that would be taken by one U configuration to remove the spilled oil. In continuous mode, the calculator predicts the number of U configurations of a specified length needed to burn the oil as it continues to be released.
All three Spill Tools calculators need an estimate of the thickness of the specified oil slick. To make that estimate, you can use either
Spill Tools Practice Exercises Try out this set of exercises to learn to use Spill Tools or build your skills.
Revised: April 16,
2001
Office of Response and Restoration, National Ocean Service, National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration