OilFlow2D

OilFlow2D is a unique software able to realistically simulate oils spills in water and overland spills over irregular terrain using flexible meshes and crude oil spills in rivers, estuaries, and coastal areas.

OilFlow2D for spills on land, simulates oil spills over any surface originating from pipelines, tank breaks, or well blowouts. The model offers the fastest and most advanced finite-volume viscous flow free-surface 2D engine based on unstructured flexible meshes to handle oil flow over complex terrain, accounting for evaporation, infiltration, heat transfer between the oil and environments and the variation in viscosity and density as a function of temperature.

OilFlow2D for spills on water simulates oil trajectory, evaporation, emulsification, and other oil fate processes, including interaction with different types of shores

The OilFlow2D model is integrated with the QGIS Geographical Information Software that provides all the tools necessary to set up the model on the most demanding sites and includes outstanding visualization and dynamic animation capabilities to facilitate oil spill risk assessments.

NEW! The new Oil Pipeline Module (OP) module is already released. This module for OilFlow2D allows automating the simulation of hundreds or thousands of leaks from pipelines often required in pipeline integrity assessments. (See below for more information).

What can you simulate with OilFlow2D?

·      Assess the extent of overland oil spills originating from any inland source.

·      Computation of oil depths, velocities, including variation of the oil properties due to changes in oil temperatures. 

·      The trajectory of oil spills in rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters, including evaporation, emulsification, dissolution and interaction

with shores.

·      Determine times at which sensitive areas would be impacted after a spill

·      Perform pipeline oil spill risk assessments and determination of impacts on high consequence areas

·      Detailed evaluation of flow from oil tank breaks

·      Seamless integration of overland spills with oil spreading on intersected water bodies. NEW 2025

·      Improved evaporation method for overland flow model. NEW 2025

·      Improved emulsification for oil on water model. NEW 2025

·      Multiple viscous fluid scenarios. NEW 2025

Why choosing OilFlow2D?

·      Unique flexible mesh overland oil spills model for more realistic simulations

·      Provides faster solutions based on GPU technology and Cloud Computing

·      Allows simulating multiple simultaneous spills on land and water

·      Batch processing of multiple spills from pipeline breaks

·      Works with any crude oil considering the specific physicochemical properties of any oil

·      Accounts for dynamic oil property variations as a function of temperature

·      Considers evaporation and infiltration losses 

·      Calculates oil evaporation, emulsification, dispersion, dissolution and interaction with shores

·      The Heat Transfer capability of the oil spill on land model considers the effect of temperature changes on density, viscosity and yield stress and is particularly suited for waxy crude oils or high pour point oils.

·      Comprehensive mesh generation with QGIS GUI

·      Import any terrain elevations

·      Output animations and 3D graphics including Google Earth

·      Zero mass conservation error

·      Online training and technical support

What is the new Oil Pipeline Module (OP) module?

The Oil Pipeline Module (OP) for OilFlow2D allows automating the simulation of hundreds or thousands of leaks from pipelines often required in pipeline integrity assessments.

The OP Module has the following capabilities:

Pre-processing

·       Allows entering a pipeline polyline and multiple spill points.

·       Automatic creation of the sources layer for batch processing of the overland oil spills.

·       Computation of the steady state initial pressure distribution along the pipeline given the oil flowrate and pressure head.

·       Considers the timing of block valves.

·       Calculates the output flow rates from leaks of any diameter in two stages: Period between initial time and valve closing and period between the closing of valves and the final oil drainage form the pipeline during depressurization.

·       The pipeline polyline can contain elevations, or the program can assign elevations from the Digital Terrain Model raster.

Post-processing

·       Numeric output includes for each spill point:

o   The outflow hydrograph (oil discharge vs time),

o   Total oil volume drained from upstream and downstream of the spill point.

o   Oil volume drained from upstream and downstream of the spill point before valve closure.

o   Oil volume drained from upstream and downstream of the spill point after valve closure.

·       Pressure head along the pipeline for the initial conditions.

·       General table of hydrographs for all spills.

·       Batch processing to generate depth and affected area maps for all spills.

·       Spill ID stamp for shape files.

·       Integrated map in a single shape file for all spills.