Leaked Oil Collection on the Sea

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout) began on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-owned Transocean-operated Macondo Prospect. Following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a sea-floor oil gusher flowed for 87 days, until it was capped on 15 July 2010.Eleven people were never found and it is considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, an estimated 8% to 31% larger in volume than the previously largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill. The US Government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3) (Wikipedia, 2015).

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Even the well was sealed successfully, how to collect the leaked oil becomes a big problem. Oil pollution could cause the destruction of wetlands and beaches along the coast of 1000 miles of the Gulf of Mexico, damage to fisheries and extinction fragile species. In order to avoid the oil drift to the American coast, rescuers used combustion to clean the leaked oil. They circled thousands of litres of oil in the fence, then moved it far from shore to sea light it controllably.

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Winds and waves make the oil flow to some of the most sensitive coastal areas, where combustion can not be used to clean the oil. The hardest place to remove the oil is marsh, where the first flow of oil spills. Once the oil has been infiltrated, the grass on the marsh must be cut off, but the oil can penetrate into the soil, where is hard to remove. In this case, we can use bacteria that eat oil, but must they have enough oxygen to produce a role. Another method is using hair and fur products which can be thrown into the sea to absorb the oil spill. In fact, to reduce the damage caused by oil spill, Louisiana has now set up 9 places to receive donations of hair and fur products.

Reference
Wikipedia,2015, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, accessed 1 May 2015,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill>