Yil Me Hu Spring 2024 - Nisqually Salmon Recovery Newsletter
2K22ENE501OILSPILL.pptx
1. OIL POLLUTION IN AQUATIC SYSTEM
SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:
DR VANDANA AJAY MALIK
2K22/ENE/502
2. CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. OIL RESERVE IN WORLD
3. OIL POLLUTION
4. SOURCES OF OIL POLLUTION
5. HARMFUL EFFECTS OF OIL POLLUTION
6. CLEAN UP AND CONTROL OF OIL POLLUTION
7. CASE STUDIES
8. REFERENCES
3. INTRODUCTION
Fossil fuels are products of decayed plants and animals that have been preserved in the earth's crust.
The remains of these organisms were chemically changed over millions of years. Fossil fuels contain
carbon and hydrogen compounds called hydrocarbons. When hydrocarbons burn they give off heat and
light. Liquid fossil fuel is called petroleum
or oil. Oil is a fossil fuel found beneath the earth’s surface. It is drilled and refined for many purposes:
• Gasoline
• Diesel
• Jet Fuel
• Plastics
Oil is a hydrocarbon chain majorly made of two atomic elements: carbon (C) and hydrogen (H)
4. OIL RESERVE IN WORLD
Oil reserves refers to the amount of crude oil that can
be technically recovered at a cost that is financially
feasible at the present price of oil.
5. OIL POLLUTION
Oil pollution can be caused by any spillage of crude oil or its refined products. However, the largest
and most damaging pollution events usually involve spills of petroleum or heavy bunker fuel from
disabled tankers or drill platforms at sea, from barges or ships on major inland waterways, or from
blowouts of wells or broken pipelines on land.
SOURCES OF OIL POLLUTION
Oil spills can be caused by human error, natural disasters, technical failures or deliberate
releases. Accidental oil spills are in the focus of the literature, although some of the largest oil
spills ever recorded, the Gulf War Oil Spill (sea based) and Kuwaiti Oil Fires (land based) were
deliberate acts of war.
1) Natural Seeps
2) Oil Tanker and Vessels
3) Offshore Oil Platforms
4) Pipelines
6. Natural Oil Seeps
Crude oil and natural gas seeps
naturally out of fissures in the ocean
seabed and eroding sedimentary rock.
These seeps are natural springs where
liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons leak
out of the ground (like springs that ooze
oil and gas instead of water).
7. SEA-BASED
Operational discharges -Discharges of oil from shipping, offshore extraction of oil, and transport
of oil in pipelines is the result of either accidents or "normal", deliberate operational discharges.
Accidental discharges -ACCIDENTAL DISCHARGES (oil spills) occur when vessels collide or
come in distress at sea (engine breakdown, fire, explosion) and break open, or run around
close to the shore.
Accidental oil spills from tankers; other commercial vessels; grounded and abandoned vessels;
oil platforms (blowouts); pipelines- spills from ships.
From offshore drilling: Operational discharges in the offshore exploration for and extraction of oil
and natural gas include operational wastes, such as drilling fluids/drilling muds, produced
formation waters and formation cuttings, and machinery space discharges.
From offshore pipelines: Operational discharges from offshore oil pipelines usually consist of
chemical discharges during construction, hydrostatic testing, commissioning, pigging, and
maintenance of the pipeline systems.
9. LAND-BASED
• Discharges of untreated or insufficiently treated municipal sewage and storm water (urban
runoff).
• Discharges with rivers- Discharges of untreated or insufficiently treated waste water from
coastal industries.
• Accidental or operational discharges of oil from coastal refineries, oil storage facilities, oil
terminals, and reception facilities.
• Emissions of gaseous hydrocarbons from oil-handling onshore facilities (terminals,
refineries, filling stations) and from vehicles exhausts (traffic). Oil Pollution 18 Discharges
Of Untreated Water From Coastal Industries.
•
10. Discharges Of Untreated Water From Coastal Industries
• Oil discharged with untreated or insufficiently treated municipal sewage and storm water — urban runoff
— comes from cars, machinery, spills at filling stations and garages, flushed-out residues of lubricants,
etc.
• Oil also enters the marine environment with untreated or insufficiently treated waste water or storm
water from various coastal facilities: coastal industries, coastal refineries, coastal oil storage facilities,
oil terminals, and reception facilities. Untreated storm water from ports, refineries, oil storage facilities,
oil terminals etc. especially oil terminals, has a high oil content that originates from valves, pumps,
loading ramps for vehicles, quays, etc.
• People pour untreated waste water and residues directly into rivers and the rivers bring the pollution,
including the oil, to the sea. Consequently, a lot of oil goes literally down the drain from our towns and
cities into the sea — either through a municipal sewage treatment plant, where it will harm the
treatment process, or more or less untreated.
11. Some of the many effects on animals coming into contact with crude oil
include:
• Hypothermia and drowning of birds as the oil breaks down the insulating
capabilities of feathers, makes them heavier and compromises flying ability.
• If oil is ingested, it can either poison the animal outright, make them extremely sick or create a level
of toxins in their system that then causes poisoning further up the food chain. Birds and other animals
often ingest oil when trying to clean themselves. Shellfish and corals are particularly at risk in these
scenarios as they cannot escape from an oil slick.
• Damage to the airways of birds and animals and damage to animal immune systems
• Interruption of breeding and fouling of breeding grounds
• Thinner bird and turtle egg shells and also damage to fish larvae, causing
deformities
• Damage to sea grass beds and other shelter/feeding areas
• Tainting of algae, which perform a vital role in waterway ecosystems.
• Oil forms a thin layer on the ocean surfaces and prevents sufficient sunlight from entering the ocean
surface. This reduces the dissolved oxygen levels in water, making it difficult for marine life to
breathe.
12. Control and clean up of oil pollution
Clean Up & Recovery: Cleanup and recovery from an oil spill is difficult and depends upon
many factors, including the type of oil spilled, the temperature of the water (affecting
evaporation and biodegradation), and the types of shorelines and beaches involved.
Methods for cleaning up include:
13. • Bioremediation: use of microorganisms or biological agentsto break down or remove oil.
• Bioremediation Accelerator: Oleophilic, hydrophobic chemical, containing no bacteria, which chemically
and physically bonds to both soluble and insoluble hydrocarbons. The bioremediation accelerator acts as
a herding agent in water and on the surface.
• Controlled burning can effectively reduce the amount of oil in water, if done properly. But it can only be
done in low wind, and can cause air pollution.
• Dispersants act as detergents, clustering around oil globules and allowing them to be carried away in the
water. This improves the surface aesthetically, and mobilizes the oil. Smaller oil droplets, scattered by
currents, may cause less harm and may degrade more easily. But the dispersed oil droplets infiltrate into
deeper water and can lethally contaminate coral. Recent research indicates that some dispersants are
toxic to corals.
• Watch and wait: in some cases, natural attenuation of oil may be most appropriate, due to the invasive
nature of facilitated methods of remediation, particularly in ecologically sensitive areas such as wetlands.
• Dredging: for oils dispersed with detergents and other oils denser than water.
• Skimming: Requires calm waters .
Methods for cleaning up include:
14. Solidifying: Solidifiers are composed of dry hydrophobic polymers that both and absorb. They
clean up oil spills by changing the physical state of spilled oil from liquid to a semi-solid or
rubber-like material that floats on water. Solidifiers are insoluble in water, therefore the removal
of the solidified oil is easy and the oil will not leach out.
Vacuum and centrifuge: oil can be sucked up along with the water, and then a centrifuge can be
used to separate the oil from the water - allowing a tanker to be filled with near pure oil. Usually,
the water is returned to the sea, making the process more efficient,
15. Equipment used includes
• Booms: large floating barriers that round up oil and lift the oil off the water
• Skimmers: skim the oil
• Sorbents: large absorbents that absorb oil
• Chemical and biological agents: helps to break down the oil
• Vacuums: remove oil from beaches and water surface
• Shovels and other road equipments: typically used to clean up oil on beaches
16. CASE STUDY
Chennai, a coastal city in India with a population of over 7 million people, was impacted by a major oil spill on January 28th 2017. The
spill occurred when two cargo ships collided about two miles away from the Chennai shoreline.
The accident released about 75 metric tons of heavy fuel oil into the Bay of Bengal. This case study provides field observations and
laboratory characterization data for this oil spill accident. Observations show that the seawalls and groins, which were installed along
the Chennai shoreline to manage coastal erosion problems, played a significant role in controlling the oil deposition patterns.
A large amount of oil was trapped within the relatively stagnant zone near the seawall-groin intersection region. The initial cleanup
efforts used manual methods to skim the trapped oil and these efforts indeed helped recover large amount of oil. Our laboratory data
show that the Chennai oil spill residues have unique fingerprints of hopanes and steranes which can be used to track the spill.
Weathering experiments show that volatilization processes should have played a significant role in degrading the oil during initial
hours. The characterization data show that the source oil contained about 503,000 mg/kg of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and
17,586 mg/kg of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
The field samples collected 6 and 62 days after the spill contained about 71,000 and 28,000 mg/kg of TPH and 4854 and 4016 mg/kg
of total PAHs, respectively. The field samples had a relatively large percentage of heavy PAHs, and most of these PAHs are highly
toxic compounds that are difficult to weather and their long-term effects on coastal ecosystems are largely unknown.
(Yuling Han, Indumathi M Nambi, T Prabhakar Clement)
17. REFERENCES
International Marine Organization (IMO), 1990; GESAMP, 1993
Environmental Ecology (Second Edition), 1995, Bill Freedman
Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences (Third Edition), 2001, J.M. Baker
Water Resources and Environment Engineering (M Rathinaswamy, S Chandramaouli, KBVN Phanindra, Uma
Mahesh)
