Unraveling the
Roles of Temperature, Salinity, and
Herder Volume on Environmental Partitioning and Efficiency of OP-40
Herder During in Situ Burning of Oil Spills
posted on 2024-03-18, 17:35authored byMd Ibnul Hasan, Srijan Aggarwal
In
situ burning (ISB) aided by a Siltech OP-40 chemical
herding
agent (OP-40) is reported as one of the most appropriate and effective
oil spill response (OSR) technique for Arctic conditions. Herein,
we parametrically investigate the efficiency of the OP-40 herder for
ISB and the post-ISB fate of OP-40 in the environment via bench-scale
laboratory ISB experiments using Alaska north slope (ANS) crude oil.
Experiments were conducted at three water temperatures, two water
salinities, and three herder volumes to evaluate the herding efficacy
of OP-40 under different environmental and herder application scenarios.
Further analyses were performed to investigate the impact of these
varying experimental conditions on the ISB burn efficiency and the
fate of OP-40. The results revealed that the herding efficiency of
OP-40 was excellent under all environmental conditions and for all
three herder volumes, and in all experiments, the herded oil was successfully
ignited. OP-40 showed a higher herding efficiency for cold and low-saline
water, while the burn efficiency was higher for cold water. In this
environmental partitioning study and analyses, on average 34.3% and
24.1% of the applied herder was found in water and burn residues,
respectively. Water temperature and salinity did not significantly
impact the fate of OP-40 in water and residue. While the results from
these relatively small and well-controlled laboratory-scale burn tests
provide useful fundamental information and highlight sampling and
other operational challenges for such studies, larger field tests
will be needed to scale these results to large, unconfined, in situ
burn scenarios.