Advancing submerged oil detection in Alberta’s waterways

Our energy industry is one of the safest in the world, but sometimes, despite the best safety plans and preventative measures, accidents like oil spills still happen. Protecting our waterways from those contaminants demands proactive innovation.

The Inland waterway simulator with blue dye added to help visualize flow within the channel.

A team of engineers at C-FER Technologies, a subsidiary of Alberta Innovates, developed an Inland Waterway Simulator to find better ways to clean up after oil spill events. This pivotal tool, located in the C-FER lab in Edmonton, supports oil spill research, with initial testing focusing on submerged oil detection.

 “Most people assume that oil naturally floats, but that’s not always the case,” says Corey Drake, research engineer at C-FER Technologies. “As certain oil products age and weather, density changes can cause them to sink beneath the waters surface, which complicates detection and cleanup efforts.”

The Inland Waterway Simulator serves as a third-party evaluation tool for emerging oil detection technologies before they are deployed in the field. It is designed to test technologies in both freshwater and saltwater conditions. The key innovation lies in its ability to test with actual hydrocarbon materials such as diluted bitumen, replicating real-world oil spill scenarios. According to Drake, very few test tanks in Canada share this capability due to the messy nature of working directly with oil products.

The simulator, a large concrete channel with a high-capacity centrifugal pump, mimics inland waterways. According to Drake, the pump propels water into the tank at a flow rate of 10,000 gallons per minute. In comparison, your kitchen faucet can only manage about two gallons per minute. . Depending on the test requirements, researchers can also add sediment to the tank to simulate a more realistic river environment and test the performance of point sensors, sonar and fluorometers in detecting and mapping submerged oil.

“Some of the technologies evaluated have been used for years, not just for oil, but for general water quality monitoring as well. However, they also work well for subsurface oil detection,” says Drake.

The results from the initial pilot program are fueling optimism and confidence for using these technologies to detect and track oil spills in the field.

“Findings were very positive. We were putting trace amounts of oil – less than one litre in a 180,000-litre water tank – and we were getting positive detections on sensors at these low  concentrations,” says Drake.

Comprehensive testing is critical for successfully deploying technologies in the field. Industry partners benefit from the simulator’s insights, informing their emergency response plans for oil spills, and vendors gain a controlled environment for system evaluations, refining their technologies based on invaluable data from the simulator.

While initially designed for oil spill research, the simulator’s potential extends to other threats such as microplastics detection in waterways. Future considerations for the simulator include adding a second pumping unit and a wave paddle generator to mimic other environments. Drake says it’s important to test these emerging technologies in a controlled environment, as it helps mitigate environmental impacts and ensures fresh drinking water for current and future generations.

Learn more about the services offered through C-FER Technologies.

This article is part of Making Waves, an annual Alberta Innovates publication highlighting water solutions we support. You can read more stories from this issue below.