The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for potential incidents involving oil and hazardous materials in U.S. Arctic waters through the U.S. Coast Guard. Its aim is to ensure access to early and on-going information about the nature and magnitude of spills to help with effective cleanup.
Namely, as the lead agency to plan for and respond to environmental threats under the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency, the Coast Guard is addressing major challenges in spill response – including information-gathering.
The work was launched on January 2015. It began because of the the stress around the Deep Water Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, which was measured with ‘limited sensors and short duration platforms’.
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In order to help the Coast Guard map spills under ice, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate has been working on an underwater robot for the past four years through a DHS Center of Excellence, the Arctic Domain Awareness Center (ADAC) at the University of Alaska Anchorage, in partnership with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
The collaboration resulted to Tethys Long Range Autonomic Underwater Vehicle or LRAUV, a helicopter-portable, torpedo-shaped system with oil sensors and navigation capabilities. This robot provides real-time data for first responders by producing and transmitting 3-D maps of crude oil, diesel, gasoline and kerosene spills.
The LRAUV can rove for 15 days and travel for 370 miles with no need of recharging batteries, and the latest prototype can make about one to two knots. Working in tandem with buoys installed on the ice, the LRAUV can provide invaluable data about a spill.
Moreover, this technology opens up possibilities for Coast Guard response capabilities. For instance, if there was a large oil spill in the Russian Chukchi Sea, where Russia and Alaska meet, and the spill drifted into U.S. waters, Coast Guard responders could quickly mobilize a team to deploy the LRAUV.
After deployment, they could monitor the data transmission from the robot back at their command center. The robot would scan for oil below and around the ice, and transmit via the specially installed buoys.
Since there is no cellular coverage in the vast Arctic, the buoys – equipped with Very High Frequency antennas to transmit data via satellites – are a key component to the LRAUV’s success. When deployed, the buoys will provide solar or wave power to recharge the robot’s batteries, an effective way to keep it charged in such remote conditions.
Also, on September 27, 2018 ADAC conducted an open-water test of its LRAUV prototype in Monterey Bay, California, with the aim to characterize an oil spill and transfer data back to shore.
The researchers equipped the underwater robot with chemical sensors and simulated an oil spill from a vessel by ‘leaking’ a non-toxic, neon green sea dye into the water. The dye, just like oil, can float in the top 13 feet of the water column, but biodegrades in sunlight in a matter of hours.
The robot surfaced every few minutes to transmit and receive data from the control vessel and check its location using cellular connection. Later on, LRAUV had scanned successfully the whole area and transmitted the data to shore for analysis.
Finally, ADAC plans to complete all rigorous testing, including under-ice tests, and the construction of communication relay buoys by the end of June 2019.
