Emergency bulk liquid cargo spill prevention system

摘要

Large bulk liquid cargo tankers are a common sight on the world's oceans and waterways. Petroleum needs worldwide have risen sharply and in order to fulfill those needs cheaply and efficiently, shipbuilders have increased the size of tankers carrying the crude oil to the point where the modern supertanker is capable of carrying millions of barrels of oil in a single trip. Such efficiency has not come without a price in that a single tank rupture can be an ecological and financial disaster. In order to minimize and even the eliminate such a disastrous event, an apparatus has been designed to be deployed inside a bulk liquid cargo tank. Should a tank be ruptured, a large expandable bladder pre- positioned within the tank would expand as oil from within the tank would pe pumped into its internal volume. The expandable bladder serves a dual purpose to act as a seal against the portion of the tank that has been ruptured eliminating the flow of oil out of the tank and seawater into the tank. The present invention is such an expandable recovery bladder with a novel bladder arrangement and a novel fiber optic sensing and control system.