Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 38 (2011): L09602, doi:10.1029/2011GL047174.
Description:
Hydrocarbons released following the Deepwater Horizon (DH) blowout were found in deep, subsurface horizontal intrusions, yet there has been little discussion about how these intrusions formed. We have combined measured (or estimated) observations from the DH release with empirical relationships developed from previous lab experiments to identify the mechanisms responsible for intrusion formation and to characterize the DH plume. Results indicate that the intrusions originate from a stratification-dominated multiphase plume characterized by multiple subsurface intrusions containing dissolved gas and oil along with small droplets of liquid oil. Unlike earlier lab measurements, where the potential density in ambient water decreased linearly with elevation, at the DH site it varied quadratically. We have modified our method for estimating intrusion elevation under these conditions and the resulting estimates agree with observations that the majority of the hydrocarbons were found between 800 and 1200 m.
Description:
Funding for this project was supported by
the National Science Foundation under RAPID grants CBET‐1045831,
CBET‐1046890, and OCE‐1048976, and by the U. S. Geological Survey,
Coastal and Marine Geology Program.
Keywords:
Deepwater Horizon
;
Fluid dynamics
;
Intrusion
;
Multiphase flow
;
Oil well blowout
;
Plume
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
Format:
application/postscript
Format:
text/plain
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