All You Need to Know about Oil Booms

Nowadays, environmental protection has become crucial worldwide, and governments are enacting new rules to address this issue more than ever. Oil and natural gas are the primary fuels for shipments and other activities and spilling them is one of the most destructive factors that can seriously endanger water, aquatics, water plants, and even people’s health. To prevent oil spills, people used to burn the oil on the water's surface or clean it up with manual rough labor.

In 1851, when the oil beds of Lambton County in Canada West (Ontario) started to threaten North America’s ecosystem, the first oil booms emerged (Source).  They are purposely invented to prevent oils from spilling around. By increasing shipments and human activities every day due to economic needs, oil booms become an effective solution today. In this blog post, we aim to delve more into what oil booms are, how they work, their different types, and any other things you need to know about them.

What are the Oil Booms?

Oil booms play a crucial role in environmental and marine protection. Oil derived from marine transportation and other activities floats on the water's surface, and it can easily be spread out by currents. Oil booms are the floating barriers anchored to the land and rolled into the water. The spread oils are accumulated behind them and prevented from spilling. This is why they may be known as oil spill containment booms.

Oil booms are typically made of foam, light plastic, metal, or other materials to float on the water and collect oil. They can also be provided as modular or non-modular, operating differently to better meet customers' needs. Oil booms are often resistant to currents and various weather conditions to be efficient in preventing oil spills in any case.

Types of Oil Booms

After producing the first generation of oil booms in the 1850s, these products have become a critical element in environmental protection, and requests for them have significantly increased. Therefore, they are designed in various types over time to meet a wide range of requirements as well. Here are the most common types of oil booms:

Containment Oil Booms

Containment oil booms are typically used to contain the oil behind them and prevent them from spilling around in the water. They are specifically provided in the following types:

Harbour Oil Booms

Harbour oil booms are modular floating barriers made from foam-filled components that connect to each other, usually via stainless steel. Due to their unique design, they are often used in petrochemical shipping terminals, ports, and desalination plants.

Fence Oil Booms

The fence oil booms, also known as foam-filled oil booms, are a set of flat, floating components made of light foam. Their super-lightweight allows them to remain on the surface of the water, and they are used in static or low-current marine areas to contain oils.

Solid Floatation Oil Booms

Solid floatation oil booms are manufactured with solid foam-core floats that can be flat or cylindrical. They are designed for heavy-duty installation in marine areas with low to high currents, making them general-purpose types of oil booms.

Inshore Oil Booms

As their name suggests, inshore oil booms are best suited to inshore. According to shallow water in these areas, they are typically air-inflated and super-light, allowing them to float on the water’s surface and prevent oils from spilling around.

Inflatable Oil Booms

Inflatable oil booms are innovative types of containment oil booms designed to self-deploy in emergency situations. They are equipped with coil, compression, or spring systems that expand automatically by drawing air through them. Inflatable oil booms are often used in inshore areas where emergency deployment is needed.

Absorbent Oil Booms

Absorbent oil booms are the other types of oil booms that are significantly designed to absorb the oil, preventing it from spilling. Manufactured by specific materials, they float on the water’s surface even if they absorb a large amount of oil.

Oil Boom Advantages and Disadvantages

Increasing shipments and other marine activities significantly raise the need to use oil booms. However, they have both advantages and disadvantages that here we aim to discuss in detail:

Advantages

Oil booms are primarily designed to prevent oil spills on the water and help protect marine environments. Their application requires them to be super light and capable of floating on the water’s surface. Accordingly, oil booms are typically made from light foams or stainless metals that provide a straightforward installation. Moreover, some oil boom manufacturer companies offer customizations that enhance their efficiency more and more. For instance, they can be equipped with marine lanterns to be recognizable during the night.

Disadvantages

Oil booms are super-efficient until they are designed with qualified, first-rate materials. Affected by external factors, they can rupture and drown. Therefore, they not only lose their functionality but also pollute the marine environment. On the other hand, if they are not equipped with skirts or special designs, cleaning oils up can be difficult and even cause oil spills.

Why Using Oil Booms Is Critical?

Oil and natural gas are the main fossil fuels, and they contain chemicals that seriously menace the ecosystem. These risks include polluting the water, harming aquatics and mammals like birds, and even threatening human life by making seafood unhealthy and unsafe. Oil booms significantly reduce the impacts of oil on the ecosystem by preventing oil from spilling out into the water along with marine activities. Accordingly, using oil booms can play a critical role in environmental protection around the world.

Primary Factors in Choosing the Right Oil Boom

Regarding the importance of using oil booms in preventing oil spills, it is crucial to choose the right type of oil boom that is capable of meeting our requirements well. Here are the primary factors that should be considered when choosing oil booms to maximize their performance in the project:

Materials

Oil booms should be manufactured with lightweight materials to float on the water, preventing oils and natural gas from spilling. In addition, it should be noticed that the materials used in oil booms do not absorb the water or oil by themselves, because it makes them heavy and flimsy. Therefore, most of the oil booms are built with water-resistant and super-light materials.

Size

The oil boom should completely cover the oil spill area to efficiently protect the environment. Whether the oil spills are large, oil booms should be heavy-duty and high capacity. On the other hand, the smaller oil spills require lighter and easy-deployable oil booms.

Water Conditions

Since oil booms are designed to be light and float on the water’s surface, currents can easily impact their performance. For calm waters, foam-filled or solid-floatation oil booms are the best options. In rough waters with moderate to high currents, the oil booms should be sturdier with anchoring capability to enhance their stability.

Type of Oil

The type of oil that spills on the water could be different. Light oils typically stay on the water’s surface and require oil booms that contain them. However, heavy oils can sink slightly below the surface and require heavy-duty oil booms or ones that have a skirt (e.g., silt curtains) to prevent oil from escaping underneath.

Duration Deployment

In some cases, the time spent deploying an oil boom is crucial. The Inflatable oil booms are the best solutions designed to deploy rapidly in emergency situations like instant oil spills.

ADOR’s Oil Booms: What You Need to Prevent Oil Spills

Ador provides the most qualified and high-performance oil booms to help its customers prevent oil spills and environmental protection. Even in case of rupturing, our oil booms are designed to float on the water’s surface. We provide various types of oil booms to efficiently meet different purposes. Here are ADOR’s oil booms and every detail you need to know about them:

Bolina Harbour Oil Booms

Bolina Harbour oil booms are designed with modular foam-filled components that connect to each other with stainless steel. They easily expand on the water’s surface without requiring bottom ballast to keep them upright. Our Bolina Harbour oil booms can be even used in rough waters with high currents due to their significant stability and buoyancy.

Ecobarrier Solid Floatation Oil Booms

Equipped with UV-stabilized and PVC membrane, Ecobarrier solid floatation oil booms offer great operation and high resistance to different weather conditions. Their modular design provides ASTM Z-connectors or zipties making them customizable in any size.

Ecobarrier Fence Oil Booms

The best option for static or low current waters. Our Ecobarrier fence oil booms are designed with closed-cell floats with zero water absorption, UV-stabilized PVC membrane, and ASTM Z-connector or zipties, offering fast and straightforward deployment.

Ecobarrier Inflatable Oil Booms

Our Ecobarrier inflatable oil booms are designed to deploy rapidly in emergency situations and instant oil spills. They are equipped with a reel, automatically expanding by filling with air to prevent oils from spilling in a significantly short time.

Ecobarrier Beach Sealing Oil Booms

ADOR’s Ecobarrier beach sealing oil booms feature air-inflated and high-tenacity PVC/TPU fabric components with super-easy deployment. They are designed to be used in shallow waters and beach areas but can be resistant to tough environmental conditions, efficiently containing the oil spills.

Conclusion

Oil spills are one of the most destructive factors that include permanent consequences for the ecosystem. Since oil and natural gas are the main fuel sources for shipment and other marine activities, they cannot be removed. Therefore, oil booms are considered the most efficient solution to address this issue. In this article, we comprehensively discussed oil booms, their applications, different types of them, and any other details you need to know about them.