The objective of this project was to assess the effectiveness of low pressure atomizing burners as a means to augment in situ burning of emulsified crude oil while minimizing pump infrastructure requirements.
The NRL examined the droplet formation and combustion behavior of flow-blurring (FBA) and effervescent atomizers (EA) to assess their suitability and infrastructure requirements for disposing of emulsified oil resulting from marine oil spills. NRL designed and constructed a FBA and an EA with flexible geometries so that they varied geometry and minimized atomizing air flow rate and pressure while minimizing the atomized droplet diameter, as measured by phase Doppler interferometry (PDI). They examined the combustion behavior of the atomized oil in both straight and swirled jets, again measuring the droplet diameters at different locations within the jet to determine the rate of droplet evaporation and combustion, as well as determining the operational limits including turn down, ignition, and lean blow out. NRL measured the same behaviors with emulsions of crude oil and sea water to determine how the atomization and combustion behavior changes with increasing fractions of sea water and determined the practical combustion limits of emulsified oil.
The project has been completed and the final report is posted below.