Fundamental Study on a New Thin Oil-film Recovery Device Based on the MHD Method

Abstract The MHD maritime oil spill recovery method has many advantages in tackling the marine thin oil-film. The existing device, in which the MHD channel is arranged horizontally, can’t operate successfully under wave conditions and the oil and air bubbles can’t move through the MHD channel smoothly. A new method with the MHD channel arranged with a slight tilt angle is proposed to improve the effect of the thin oil-film recovery. In this paper, the hydrodynamic characteristics of the seawater and air two-phase flow under the action of electromagnetic force with the MHD channel arranged obliquely were studied numerically and the results show that the static pressure decreases gradually from the MHD channel's inlet to the outlet. The flow rate decreases slightly as the tilt angle increases. The pressure rise and the effective power increase slightly as the tilt angle increases.