South Baltic OIL spill response through clean-up with biogenic oil binders

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Different ships carrying people, products and raw materials travel the Baltic Sea in heavy traffic. This leads to a significant risk for maritime accidents resulting in environmental damage, loss and injuries. Besides the immense amount of crude oil transported at sea, almost every vessel carries fuel for its own propulsion. Although being one of the busiest, the Baltic Sea is among the safest seas in the world (regulations and techniques), with national and international contingency plans in place to deal with emergencies. The efficiency of the existing techniques to respond to oil spills strongly depends on (1) how long it takes to reach the accident location and (2) the meteorological and hydrodynamic site conditions. To mitigate these limitations, new techniques are needed to respond fast and sea state independent. These issues were tackled in the project BioBind with a concept based on biodegradable oil binders, deployed by plane and removed by a special netboom (Att.3). SBOIL aims to take up this green technology to strengthen existing cross-border spill response capacities. Sub-national administration levels will be included in the cross-border cooperation. A multilingual handbook will be produced, summarizing basic knowledge about oil spills, response measures and the structural approaches of the individual SB countries to close an information gap and increase the awareness, addressing local and regional authorities and national incident managers. National and international workshops, table top exercises and awareness raising campaigns will be realized. The components of the new green technology will be purchased as a training kit to (1) inform and train people during and after the project and (2) enable the designated station to use it in an emergency. SB staff will be trained in the field and in a nautical simulator in cross-border workshops. The objectives will be met most efficiently by an international project with partners from different SB countries

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