In an In-Situ Burning (ISB) operation of a marine oil spill, igniting the oil is usually the critical step with emulsification as the main limiting factor. Several rules-of-thumbs exist to estimate ignitability based on the water content of the water-in oil emulsion. For example, emulsions with a water content above 50% are often considered not ignitable. However, we know that ignitability is also strongly related to the oil's chemical composition, i.e., content of natural surfactant that stabilise water-in-oil emulsions.

This study analyses ignitability of oil samples from a wide variety of oil types weathered in both small-scale laboratory systems, larger test basins and during field experiments in Norway. Ignitability was quantified in a standardised laboratory burning cell. The experimental data were used to develop an algorithm to predict three levels of ignitability (ignitable, reduced ignitability and not ignitable) from a standardised set of readily available oil properties, also called crude assay data.

The paper presents both examples of the experimental data and the resulting algorithm together with examples of applications for different ISB scenarios. The applications have been performed with oil spill models which have been updated to include the new ignitability algorithm.

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