Area bubble plume oil barriers

Abstract

Systems and methods for barring the advance of an oil spill or for corralling such an oil spill. The systems provide area bubble plumes of air that remain coherent to reaching the surface, in contrast to previous bubble curtains under waves. The area bubble plume may be formed by parallel sparger elements that provide a wide plume of bubbles, and are suspended below the surface no more than 10 m. The sparger elements may be mounted in a matrix of structural support members. A series of discrete segments of the system can be connected together to form a flexible chain. The connected segments are desirably coiled around a spool on the rear end of a vessel for easy deployment. The sparger elements are tubular and made of the porous, resistive material that requires a greater luminal pressure than the exterior pressure to create fine bubbles.