3. Shovels and other road maintenance equipments are used to clean up oil on beaches.
4. Solidifying- Solidifiers are composed of dry hydrophobic polymers that adsorb oil. Solidifiers are insoluble in water; change the physical state of spilled oil from liquid to a semi-solid or a rubber-like material that floats on water making the removal of the solidified oil easy. The time required for solidification of oil is controlled by the surface area or size of the polymer as well as the viscosity of the oil.
Advantages of solidifying:
- Non-toxic to aquatic and wild life.
Suppresses harmful vapors commonly associated with hydrocarbons such as Benzene, Xylene, Methyl Ethyl, Acetone and Naphtha
5. Chemical dispersants - Chemical dispersantsare materials that break down the oil into simpler chemical constituents and help to disperse the oil to make it less harmful to wildlife and shorelines.
6.In-situ burning- This involves the burning of freshly spilled oil while it's still floating on the water under favorable conditions of low wind. However this causes air and water pollution and harmful to aquatic life.
7. Biological entities like microorganisms (microbial bioremediation) or plants (phytoremidiation) or biological agents are used to break down or remove oil.
Anaerobic Sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), acid-producing bacteria and aerobic-general aerobic bacteria (GAB) are naturally oil-consuming bacteria. These bacteria occur naturally and act to remove oil from an ecosystem. In an oil spill their biomass will tend to replace other populations in the food chain.
It is worth remembering that in nature there is no single strain ofbacteria having metabolic capacity to degrade all the components found within crude oil. Biodegradation of crude oil involves a succession of species within the consortia of microbes present.
To get better results,cleaning of oil spills is often deployed as an integrated operation of physical, chemical and biological means. For eg.the slick is barricaded by physical structures and chemical dispersants are applied within the barricade both above and below the surface of the oil slick to break the oil into smaller droplets making it more easy for bacteria to degrade it.