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Shore line clean up of oil after the Full City spill in Norway by using Salarollpump, August 2009 Four Salarollpump systems were rented out to the Norwegian Coast Guard. They were operated by different people from the Norwegian Civil Defence and other organizations. Supervisors from Salarollpump gave initial training before use and participated in some of the operations.
The film shows two operations. The first part of the film is where oil was pumped from a boat at shallow water and in the second part of the footage is where oil was pumped on land. In general, the geography was relatively accessible. One shoreline on each side of the fjord and a big part of the spill could be reached with vacuum trucks. The Salarollpump was used in remote areas which was inaccessible for vacuum trucks. The accident happened in weather conditions with wind and rather high waves. Oil was therefore found in pockets approx. 3 m up from the sea level on land and approx 30 m from the shore line. The beaches were rocky with a lot of stones.
Pumping from boat:
After the oil hit the beach, booms was deployed to protect the oil from being washed out on open water again. The oil was both relatively “soft” like chocolate mousse but lumps could be sticky and thick. Approx. 1 tonne of the oil was pumped from behind the booms in about two hours when the film was taken. The container had a valve at the bottom where water was let out. When the boat entered the oil spill, pumping was started immediately. It was soon found that the easiest was to suck the oil with a simple suction nozzle as it was hard to deploy more complicated equipment like skimmers etc. Another problem is to feed the nozzle or skimmer or whatever equipment is used to collect the oil. As the oil quantity around one tonne was collected rather quickly with the simplest devices they were also used. It was important to find the way to work with the nozzle. If it was placed to low it did suck too much water and if it was placed too high it did suck too much air. In the right position that was rather easy to find the oil was sucked up fast. Large lumps were sucked up easily without water when the nozzle was placed tight to the lump. Another reason for sucking direct with the nozzle was that the lumps easily could have clogged other equipment. Also seaweed was mixed with the oil and in case of large quantities the hoses could clog and was easily cleared by reversing the pump.
Pumping from the land:
Seaweed was also here mixed with the oil and the function to reverse was used. Under the oil were a lot of small stones and the slow suction as compared to a vacuum system was more favourable. (The displacement of air, when the nozzle is not submerged in oil, is not more than the nominal capacity of the pump when pumping water). It was therefore possible to avoid pumping too much stones from the ground just below the oil.
Cleaning of equipment:
Cleaning of the inside of the hoses is easily done by sucking a sponge ball through the system and after that circulate diesel oil or other detergent. The equipment is cleaned on the outside with detergent and warm water.
To Summarize:
In total the Oil spill was 200 - 300 tonnes, how much was cleaned up using the Salarollpump is uncertain although a large portion of oil was cleaned out at the remote areas of the spill.
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