About construction of simulation tank for oil recovery in marine situations

Since "NAKHODKA" oil spill incident in 1997, several new equipments or systems for oil recovery have been researched and developed in Japan. New oil skimming vessels were launched and expected to work well. It is hard to judge how effectively each equipment or product performs at the site of coasts without experience. Canada and U.S. test the equipments in a large tank of Ohmsett with towing bridge; Norway does in big circulating tank and on the sea. They can improve their outcomes with many data from the experiments in such real situations. However, we did not have such a test tank in Japan, and we could not have any opportunities to test in real situations. The government appropriated funds for constructing new tank at PARI for research and development of oil spill response in supplementary budget for 2002. The tank's specifications were planned to test equipments for oil recovery as if we test them at the site of coasts. This work collects requirements that the tank should satisfy and themes that we should do with this tank. Objective of the tank is to advance researches and developments about recovery of emulsified heavy oil that causes hard damages in marine environments. We should simulate waves, velocities of vessels (or currents), water temperatures, viscosities of the oil, and winds at the site of coasts, and test several skimmers, oil booms, oil recovery systems in order to judge their performances and behaviors under being influenced by several factors. Therefore, the tank dimensions are that the width for 6 m, length for 20 m, and water depth for 2.5 m. Salty water is filled in and controlled its temperature by chiller and heater, and leftovers of the oil are cleaned through oil filter. We can generate waves for the max 0.5 m, current for the max 1 m/s. Physics and chemistry analyzing room and a cylindrical tank (depth for 10 m) are placed as supplementary facilities and the plant is appreciated synthetic.