State of Knowledge

This chapter presents the state of knowledge for both the technological and the experimental aspects of this thesis.In section 2.1, the propagation of oil in the ocean after an oil well blowout is discussed on a macroscopic scale and an introduction to different aspects of oil spill modeling is given. In section 2.2, oil reservoir characteristics and physico-chemical properties of hydrocarbons are presented with regard to their importance for oil propagation. In addition, the specific conditions of oil reservoir, blowout conditions and seawater environment present during the MC252 Blowout are discussed. Section 2.3 presents the state-of-the-art knowledge of drop formation processes in an oil jet entering into seawater. The spatial allocation of these topics is shown in Figure 2.1.The available technologies and facilities for laboratory investigations under deep-sea conditions are reviewed in section 2.4.Finally, section 2.5 discusses how this thesis contributes to the open research questions in the aforementioned fields.