To prevent marine pollution by oil discharged from ships, the development of oil detecting devices of high performance and reliability has been internationally required. In the report, the performance of a detecting device of oil/water interface being newly developed at the Institute was investigated.
In the tank cleaning procedure carried out on tankers during the navigation, the residual oily water is gathered to a slop tank on board. In spite of the fact that it is of great importance to detect the interface between oil and water in the tank in order to prevent oil from being discharged overboard, there is the fatal defect in the existing detection techniques that the residual oil of high viscosity adheres tightly to the detector head. Accordingly, the new detecting device of high reliability, which can effectively distinguish oil layer from water even when a little bit of oil of high viscosity may adhere to it, has been developed by applying electromagnetic induction method, and the performance of the device was experimentally investigated.
