An oil spill radar from Swedish safety product supplier Consilium was tested early June in what was the largest and most comprehensive annual oil spill response exercise in Europe. The three-day trials were part of an exercise to certify safety and efficiency in oil spill response operations.
The operation was conducted by the Norwegian Clean Seas Association For Operating Companies (NOFO), involving ten boats, helicopters and planes coordinated and supervised by the Norwegian Coastal Administration.
The Consilium Selesmar Selux ST 340 radar display and a 12kW 2.7-metre antenna radar sensor were temporally installed on the vessel 'Bergen'. The Selux ST radar display was equipped with an add-on software package, providing advanced hardware video processing function to enable the detection and tracking of oil slicks.
Consilium is the first company in this market segment able to provide an oil detection feature built into in an IMO/Solas ARPA navigational radar plant. The radar plant is using the same hardware already approved by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency in Germany and is compliant with the European Maritime Directive (MED).
The navigation officer can use the radar display as a normal ARPA radar and then easily switch over to the oil spill function whenever necessary.
A Master/Slave interswitch board is provided as an integral part of the Consilium radar plant. This means that the oil spill radar display can easily be interfaced to all radar sensors of the navigational radar plant.
The oil spill detection is also achieved by the excellent technical performance of the Consilium radar sensor and by its capability to increase the speed of the antenna rotation to up to 44 revolutions per minute. The advanced video processing allows for operation under all kinds of visibility conditions.
Under all kinds of sea state conditions, oil slicks were detected and clearly recognised up to the maximum limit of the sea clutter map.
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