A Novel Method for Oil Spill Cleanup Through an Optimized Pragmatic Automated System: Year Three Monish Saravana Kumar Divya Sundari This paper is the second-place Florida winner of the 2023 Stockholm Junior Water Prize. Oil spills are an urgent global problem that has been worsening over the last four years (International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation [ITOPF], 2023). Devastating nearby ecosystems and disrupting economies, they can contaminate water and cause long-lasting damage. Despite the development of efficient sorbents, the method of sorbent deployment ultimately determines the effectiveness of cleanup efforts. The Oil Spill Cleanup Through an Optimized Pragmatic Automated System (OCTOPAS) is a novel sorbent deployment method that cleans up oil spills much more efficiently than conventional methods. The OCTOPAS has two main components: a digital app and a physical boat. Using a novel algorithm, the OCTOPAS app generates the optimal path to deploy the sorbents and the OCTOPAS boat gets this instruction and deploys sorbents pragmatically. An alarming revelation was made in the latest study by ITOPF in 2023: Oil spills have relentlessly increased worldwide. Surprisingly, over 15,000 tons of oil were spilled into the ocean in 2022. The magnitude of the catastrophic effects caused by these spills make it a critical, global issue that demands immediate attention.
Background Oil spills are a grave danger to marine life, with devastating effects on animal health and
the ecosystem as a whole (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], 2021; Edmond, C., 2021). The toxic fumes emitted by spilled oil can poison animal lungs and immune systems, while physical exposure can cause suffocation and hinder reproduction. The negative effects on a region’s flora and fauna can be catastrophic, as the ecosystem does not have enough time to adapt to the sudden changes, which can be long-lasting and lead to potential collapse. The contamination of water affects both marine animals and humans, posing a serious threat to health. The economic damage caused by oil spills is also significant, disrupting fishing and tourism industries that generate billions of dollars in revenue. In the fight against oil spills, current research has primarily focused on developing highly effective sorbents; however, even the best sorbents can only do so much. The key to a successful oil spill cleanup lies in the deployment method of the sorbent. Despite the best efforts of conventional methods, a mere 30 percent of spilled oil was recovered in 2022, using the most efficient sorbents. This leaves much room for sorbent deployment methods in oil spill cleanups and OCTOPAS is a sorbent deployment system that is optimized and automated.
Goals, Process, and Timeline Goals The goal of this project was to create a method that would drastically improve the efficiency of oil spill cleanups, and OCTOPAS has exceeded the
Figure 1. The OCTOPAS process that operates in the real world.
10 December 2023 • Florida Water Resources Journal
engineering goals set. With its implementation, oil spill cleanup efficiency can be significantly improved, and a meaningful impact can be made on this global environmental crisis. Process The process of OCTOPAS (Figure 1) is as follows: S If an oil spill occurs, pictures of the oil spill are taken using a drone. S These images then get processed by an imageprocessing algorithm (OCTOPAS app), which distinguishes the oil from the water, and analyzes the image for the area of the spill to calculate the optimal path for the OCTOPAS boat. S Once this algorithm has processed the image, a wireless Bluetooth message will be sent to the OCTOPAS boat, which is loaded with sorbents. Based on these images and the calculated optimal path, the boat will move through the oil spill, dispensing sorbents that clean it up. S The analytics of OCTOPAS are transmitted to its app in real time. The engineering goals for OCTOPAS are as follows: 1. Oil Spill Cleanup Efficiency a. At least 200 percent improvement over the conventional method 2. OCTOPAS Reaction Time a. Efficiency of the image-processing algorithm i. Processing time must be less than 15 seconds 3. Analytics a. Displayed through the OCTOPAS app
Figure 2. OCTOPAS boat.
Figure 2. OCTOPAS boat.
Photograph oof OCTOPAS Boat –