The development of holographic approach to measure subsea release of oil and gas, a case study focused on droplet size and distributions

The requirement of oil has increased the potential hazard of the accidents of the marine oil more evident, which urgently needs human to pay attention to monitoring oil production in order to reduce the economic loss and environmental damage. Although many efforts has been made to develop devices or instruments for marine oil spill monitoring, the droplet processing in micro environment is still not clear. The application of digital holographic technology is the reliable way of locating and monitoring the spilling droplet in situ. To this end, we designed and developed a set of monitoring system for oil spill of submarine pipeline with in-line digital holographic system. By using a laser of 660 nm and a monochrome CCD, the observing scale of the oil droplet and others ranges from 20 pm to 200 pm. This system has been proved effective in the experiment to observe oil droplet as well as other suspended particles, microbe or emulsification. The main process and related research will be briefly addressed in this article.