Oil spill is the name given to a form of human pollution that occurs when oil is released into a body of water. The cause of oil spills are usually large tankers carrying oil that break down. The oil could fall out through a hole in the tanker’s metal plating, polluting the environment and all wildlife occupying the water in which the oil is spilled in.

The gulf war oil spill is considered to be the worst oil spill in history, in which 136,000-1,500,000 tons of crude oil were spilled.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill happened in Alaska on March 24, 1989, and is considered to have made a very significant impact on the wildlife.

There are many ways to remove oil spills, but I will talk about three of them, dispersants, sorbents, and skimmers. I have experimented removing oil with each one.

Dispersants: After doing some research, I found out that dispersants have a bad impact on the environment due to the chemicals involved and because the oil remains in the water along with the dispersed substance. Also, the dispersants removed the least amount of oil in our experiment. The chemicals used in dispersants are expensive as well. Waves are needed to spread the dispersant in the water, so it wouldn’t work in calm waters. An advantage is that some types of dispersants dissolve the oil into the salt water, so they don’t require effort or money to be removed. Also, after being placed into the water, dispersants do not need anything else to work, so there is very little effort in placing it into the water.

Sorbents: An example of sorbents are sponges and materials such as polypropylene. Most of these materials are expensive, but if bought in bulk they would be cheaper. Since most sorbents are large, the price for removing them from the water will be high as well due to the fact that they have to be removed before they sink to the sea bed, this happens when the material gets denser than the water due to the oil. There is little effort in using sorbents due to the fact that they can be placed into the water from ships. Out of the three methods tested, this method removed the most oil, and removed a small amount of water. Sorbents have no bad effect on the environment and wildlife due to the fact that they are removed once they absorb the oil, and do not harm the wildlife. Sorbents remove little water along with the oil, mainly due to the face that oil is denser than water, therefore staying at the top, while the water stayed at the bottom. 

Skimmers: Skimmers are not expensive due to the fact that the vacuums used in this method can be reused. A disadvantage of skimmers is that they require calm waters to remove the oil, and if there are strong winds, which are common around large bodies of water, it won’t work. Skimmers require the most amount of effort since they must be operated by people. The impact that skimmers have on water however, is low since wildlife might be disturbed due to human activity in the area, but not harmed. Another disadvantage is that they remove water along with the oil, and that it’s hard to remove oil from the middle of water, since boats have to be sent in to remove it. The last disadvantage I noticed is that skimmers take time to remove the oil from water, and in this time the oil can spread throughout the water, making it hard to be removed.

After evaluating each method’s advantages and disadvantages, I came to the conclusion that sorbents are the best method out of the three. They are the most expensive method, but to remove the same amount of oil from the water with skimmers would cost more if skimmers were used. They are more efficient than dispersants due to the fact that they do not harm the environment, while dispersants can be toxic to the wildlife (e.g. fish, whales, sharks) or can destroy their food sources (plankton and seaweed) Out of the three methods, sorbents are the only one that don’t require a certain weather condition to be effective. Another advantage they have over skimmers is that sorbents remove very small amounts of water by comparison.