Essay on oil spill Cleaning Operations
Natural degradation of huge amounts of crude oil takes its own time. However, as long as the oil continues to float over the water surface, it harms the aquatic life and as such cleaning up of oil spills becomes very important. This is done as follows:
(1) Confining the Oil Spill to a Limited Area:
It is easier to deal with an oil spill if it is confined to a smaller area. Attempts are also made to prevent the oil slick from reaching the shore line or shallow areas as it is these regions which are much affected and it is in these regions that maximum diversity of life forms occurs.
For this purpose barriers or booms are placed around the oil slick. Once confined to a limited area away from the shore-line, spilled oil may even be left as such for the nature to take care of. In turbulent sea, however, crude petroleum may splash out or pass through from under the floating booms to contaminate fresh areas. When the volume of the spill is large it is often a stupendous task to confine it to a limited area.
(2) Mechanical Removal of Oil from Water Surface:
Once the spill has been contained by the barriers or mechanical booms it is usually sucked up with the help of skimmers. Skimmers are mechanical devices which remove the top layers of the oil contaminated water.
The Essay on The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Whats an oil spill ? Oil spills happen when people make mistakes or are careless and cause an oil tanker to leak oil into the ocean. There are a few more ways an oil spill can occur. Equipment breaking down may cause an oil spill. If the equipment breaks down, the tanker may get stuck on shallow land. When they start to drive the tanker again, they can put a hole in the tanker causing it to leak ...
(3) Burning the Crude Petroleum on Sea Surface:
Burning of oil on the surface of water has generally been found to be less successful because more volatile fraction evaporates quickly while water below removes heat faster and the fire is extinguished. Burning of oil slick also leads to extensive air pollution.
(4) Use of Absorbents:
Absorbents also facilitate an oil slick cleanup operation. They absorb the oil and prevent it from spreading further. Cheap natural materials like saw dust, pine bark, peat moss, straw or synthetic absorbent like polyethylene,, polystyrene, polyurethane etc. are spread over the oil layer. A large quantity of oil can be removed from the sea surface when these materials are removed from water.
(5) Treatment of the Crude Oil with Dispersants:
Dispersants are chemical mixtures which cause oil to spread and disperse in the same manner as soap removes oil and grease from one’s hands. It contains a surfactant, a solvent and a stabilizer. The solvent enables surfactant to mix with, penetrate the oil and turbulence causes the formation of emulsion while the stabilizer prevents the emulsion from coalescing once it is formed.
Dispersion, therefore, increases the slick surface and is effective in diffusing the crude oil. The process of microbial degradation is also speeded up. However dispersants contain chemicals which may be harmful to marine life while emulsified oil droplets may sink down carrying toxic substances with them which may cause further damage.
(6) Microbial Treatment of the Crude Oil:
There are a number of bacteria almost found universally which live on hydrocarbons and are responsible for bio-degradation of petroleum crudes. They occur in large numbers at places which are rich in oil. A major drawback in these naturally occurring microbes is that their genetic make-up is capable of decomposing only a limited number of hydrocarbons as raw material and that too at a very slow rate.
Pseudomonas represents such a group of bacteria which decompose a number of esoteric compounds which most of other microbes are incapable of degrading. As the genes coding for enzymes which attack hydrocarbons are located not on the main bacterial chromosome but on plasmids, it has been easier for the biotechnologist to pool together genes from different strains of bacteria and produce a super-bug.
The Term Paper on Extraction Of Jathropa Curcas Seed Fats And Oil And Identification
The experiment had the objectives of extracting fats and oil from plant sample using 3:2 hexane-isopropanol solvent through Soxhlet method and of identifying and characterizing unknown oil sample using different chemical analyses. It was divided into two major parts: (1) Extraction of Jathropa curcas seed fats and oil, and (2) Identification and characterization of unknown oil. After the fats and ...
This super-bug is capable of decomposing a wide range of hydrocarbons at a faster rate than most of the natural strains. Though the super-bug has not been used commercially the day is not far away when suck microbes, cultivated in laboratory mixed with straw and dried would be ready to be sprinkled over the oil spill. The microbe would quickly decompose the petroleum crude.
Microbial products can serve as an efficient replacement for chemical dispersants and surfactants. A strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been diveloped which produces large quantities of surface active agent capable of reducing viscosity and surface tension at the oil water interface, being a product of biological activity, these chemicals are highly bio-degradable. Chemical surfactants on the other hand are highly toxic substances with a very poor bio-degradability and hence could do more damage’ than useful.
