*Possible Oil Spills Disposal for Environmental Water-Body Protection DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107106*


#### **Table 4.**

*Results of sorption capacity test of absorption sock.*

**Figure 9.** *The absorption sock after absorption of crude oil (left) and oil from the water/oil mixture(right).*

sorption sock was soaked with oil. This can be considered as excellent results, which show that the use of an absorption sock for small oil spill disposal is a very suitable choice.

The combination of mechanical methods (oil containment booms, oil skimmer, or sorbents) of cleaning oil spills is one of the most used and also the most effective [2, 14]. Complications for the effective operation of booms, skimmers, and sorbents are adverse weather (strong wind and rain), strong waves and currents. These significantly affect oil spill behavior and also make difficult operations with the equipment. Commonly used booms operate at a maximum wave speed of 7 knots. At higher speeds, it is necessary to deploy special types of booms as well as special equipment [14]. Otherwise splash-over or sinking of the boom may occur. It is very important to choose the right type of containment boom for using, because the boom is the first deployed device on the site and the last one, which will be remoted. Depending on the current wind-, waves-, and currents conditions and the size of the oil spill, the type of sorbent to be used is also chosen. Particles that are too light can be blown into the open sea by strong winds, and on the contrary, particles that are too heavy could settle to the bottom together with bounded oil particles. Adverse conditions such as wind and waves, in addition to complicating the operations with the equipment, significantly increase the economic costs of oil spill cleaning. Despite these disadvantages, mechanical methods of oil spill cleanup are among the most widely used. Advantages include the possibility of recovery of captured oil, not introducing additional chemicals into the environment, the possibility of combination with biotechnological methods [2, 3, 14, 27, 38].

Alternatives to mechanical methods are in-situ burning, chemical dispersion, biological methods. In-situ burning is suitable for rapid burning of oil on the water surface in case of large spills. The disadvantage is the production of a huge amount of smoke containing toxic substances. These can spread over large areas in windy weather and affect light conditions and air quality in them. During chemical dispersion, surfactant substances are sprayed onto the oil layer, disrupting it, reducing the surface tension of water, which leads to emulsification and dispersion of oily substances throughout the water column. A major disadvantage of both mentioned methods is the secondary pollution in the vicinity of the accident, which contributes to the damage of natural aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems [14, 27, 38].

Against the background of these facts, mechanical methods of removing oil spills are considered highly effective and also advantageous from an environmental point of view [2, 14, 38]. Since it is not entirely possible to prevent oil spill accidents, the research and development of these methods is one of the challenges of many scientists. Improvement occurs mainly in the development of new or modified sorbents in order to increase their sorption capacity, the ability to recover oil, ease of handling. Cost reduction and environmental suitability are also important factors. Organic and synthetic materials are investigated (multi-layered graphene, chitosan, kenaf fiber, ZnO), waste material is used, surface treatment of the sorbent, creation of composite sorbents with the addition of nanoparticles, additive substances inducing the magnetic properties of the sorbent, etc. [2, 3, 14, 27, 39–43].
