Sharif Digital Repository

Oil spills in the marine environment can have serious environmental, social and economic impacts. These impacts may be of transnational nature, and this makes the oil spill problem an international issue. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a common structured methodology for oil spill risk assessment. In this research, a general framework is presented for probabilistic risk assessment of oil spill from offshore oil wells. A case study is also performed in Persian Gulf to quantify the risk posed by 357 offshore wells to the near-shore receptors. First, thousands of hypothetical spill scenarios of different volumes are defined and simulated using a Lagrangian particle tracking model. Then,... 

The present study examined the sorption capacity and sorption kinetics of four-type perlite for oil spills clean up. These four types are different on their porous space, expansion ability and special surface area. The tests were done both in static and dynamic methods. Experiments showed that the perlite spread on oil spill rapidly and floated on the surface of oil spill because of its low density (80-180 kg/m3). Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM) of a typical structure of expanded perlite showed that it of high porous space. Sorption kinetic of oil spill into porous expanded perlite was evaluated by weight increase of crude oil with sorption time. According to kinetic study sorption of oil... 

A new gelator based of oleylamide has been introduced, which was gelled nonpolar hydrocarbon and CCl4 solvents through self-assembly. Also, the gelator formed a two-component hydrogel in combination with SDS, an anionic surfactant. UV-Vis studies revealed that the H-type and J-type aggregation of organogels in hexane and hydrogel in water, respectively. The xerogel, obtained by evaporating the solvent of organogel, selectively gelled and adsorbed oil spills on water surfaces. The effect of the various parameters, including temperature, water acidity and pH on the oil spill adsorption was studied, revealing the high ability of the xerogel to removing the oil contamination from water in up to... 

New studies regarding the sorption of fluids by solids are published every day. In performance testing, after the sorbent has reached saturation, it is usually removed from the sorbate bath and allowed to drain. The loss of liquid from the sorbents with time is of prime importance in the real-world application of sorbents, such as in oil spill response. However, there is currently no equation used for modeling the unsteady state loss of the liquid from the dripping sorbent. Here, an analytical model has been provided for modeling the dynamic loss of liquid from the sorbent in dripping experiments. Data from more than 60 sorbent-sorbate systems has been used to validate the model. The... 

Persian Gulf is a semi-enclosed highly saline reverse estuary that is exposed to the risk of oil spills in offshore oil and gas activities. In the early 2000s, a specific version of NOAA's Trajectory Analysis Planner (TAP II) was developed for Persian Gulf to assist regional organizations in preparing oil spill contingency plans. In this research, a new stochastic model is developed to cover the limitations of TAP II. The new model is based on an advanced trajectory model, which is now linked with high resolution spatiotemporal data of the wind and sea current. In a case study, the developed model is compared with TAP II, and evaluated by multiple tests designed for analysis of uncertainty,... 

Different causes lead to accidental oil spills from fixed and mobile sources in the marine environment. Therefore, it is essential to have a systematic plan for mitigating oil spill consequences. In this research, a general DSS is proposed for passive and active response planning in Persian Gulf, before and after a spill. The DSS is based on NOAA's advanced oil spill model (GNOME), which is now linked with credible met-ocean datasets of CMEMS and ECMWF. The developed open-source tool converts the results of the Lagrangian oil spill model to quantitative parameters such as mean concentration and time of impact of oil. Using them, two new parameters, emergency response priority number (ERPN)... 

During the past decades, a significant increase occurred in accidental oil spill in the aquatic environments. In this regard, oil spill in Marine freshwater is still considered as a major environmental hazard. In this research, the experimental data on the sorption capacity of expanded perlite to crude oil were correlated with the equilibrium isotherm of Langmuir, Freudlich, Tempkin and the three parameter Redlich-Peterson isotherms. The results obtained from each specified isotherms were compared and accuracy of the models were favorably discussed. Accuracy of each model using the error function were evaluated. Moreover, the effect of type of objective function on the final results was... 

Oil spills are serious environmental issues that potentially can cause adverse effects on marine ecosystems. In some marine areas, like the Baltic Sea, there is a large number of wrecks from the first half of the 20th century, and recent monitoring and field work have revealed release of oil from some of these wrecks. The risk posed by a wreck is governed by its condition, hazardous substances contained in the wreck and the state of the surrounding environment. Therefore, there is a need for a common standard method for estimating the risks associated with different wrecks. In this work a state-of-the-art model is presented for spatial and stochastic risk assessment of oil spills from... 

Sorption capacity as well as sorption kinetics of oil onto four different expanded perlites with different physical and surface properties were studied. In order to meticulously measure the amount of oil to be sorbed onto the adsorbents used in this study both static and dynamic methods were employed. It would be worth noting that the adsorbent, i.e., perlite can spread on the oil and float on the surface thanks to its low density. The variation of the amount of oil sorbed onto the adsorbents with time was recorded and the weight of adsorbent was monitored at each specified time. The experimental results showed that grain sizes with high surface area can sorb oil to be spread on water... 

Herein, we demonstrated a facile method for the fabrication of magnetic and superhydrophobic polyurethane sponge with water contact angle of 159° as an adsorbent for cleanup the marine oil spill pollution. For this aim, a polyurethane sponge was coated with carbon black (CB), hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)@Fe3O4, and acrylic resin and then characterized by different techniques. Owing to the chemical and thermal stability of h-BN and CB, the modified sponge was stable under corrosive conditions (pH = 1–14 and salt solutions) and at different temperatures (−12 °C–105 °C). In addition to common oils and organic solvents, we also used the real spilled oils containing monoaromatics and... 

The increase of pollution and the expansion of industrial, agricultural wastewater and urban runoff discharges in water sources have intensified the concentration of water pollutants. Considering that in Iran as in other countries the major part of drinking water is obtained from surface waters and due to the importance of disinfection, chlorination is doubtlessly the optimum and most common water treatment method used. However this method produces chlorination by-products (CBPs). Trihalomethanes(THMs) and Haloaceticacids (HAAs) are the main and most important groups of disinfection by-products (DBPs). Separation of THMs has gained a lot of breakthroughs since a lot of time elapses from its... 

In this paper the effect of the sulphate concentration on the performance of a three-stage anaerobic baffled packed-bed reactor (ABPR) was investigated. Synthetic wastewater (3000 mg COD/l) was used as the sole organic substrate. The 30 liters fixed-bed bioreactor filled with plastic packing and divided in three equal sections was used as the mABPR reactor. The unit was run at a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 1 day and at temperature of 25° C. The results of this study showed that when COD/SO42- ratios were changed from 30 to 3 with increasing sulphate concentration from 100 to 1000 mg/l, COD removal slightly was decreased. Maximum COD and sulphate removal were 91 and 96%, respectively,... 

Bioremediation of soil and groundwater sites contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons is known as a technically viable, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable technology. The purpose of this study is to investigate laboratory-scale bioremediation of petroleum-hydrocarbon contaminated soil through development of eight bioreactors, two bioreactors for each bioremediation mode. The modes were: (1) natural attenuation (NA); (2) biostimulation (BS) with oxygen and nutrients; (3) bioaugmentation (BA) with hydrocarbon degrading isolates; (4) a combination of biostimulation and bioaugmentation (BS-BA). Total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) mass balance over the bioreactors showed about 2% of... 

Sample preparation for non-target analysis is challenging due to the difficulty in the extraction of polar and non-polar analytes simultaneously. Most commercial solid sorbents lack the proper comprehensiveness for extraction of analytes with different physiochemical properties. A possible key is the combination of hydrophobic polymer and hydrophilic surface functional groups in solid based extraction methods in order to generate the susceptibility for retaining both polar and non-polar analytes. To pursue this goal, in this study, four polar groups including [sbnd]NH 2 , [sbnd]NO 2 , [sbnd]COOH, and [sbnd]COCH 3 were chemically bound to Amberlite XAD-4 substrate in order to prepare a... 

Dynamic hydrosalinity models are available, but are not used extensively on a large scale soil which receives wastewater from industrial areas, partly because adequate database are expensive to be obtained. Thus, for this reason, there is an urgent need to assess the salt and other pollutant loads collected in wastewater flows into the soil and/ or ground water systems. A conceptual hydrosalinity model was used on two major underlying principals of mass balance and steady state. This model was initially tested on the 4,117 km2 plains west of the Yazd-Ardakan district in the central part of Iran. This model was used at a time when the soil and ground water salinity problem was serious due to... 

Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) refers to the process of using bacterial activities for more oil recovery from oil reservoirs mainly by interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration mechanisms. Investigating the impact of these two mechanisms on enhanced oil recovery during MEOR process is the main objective of this work. Different analytical methods such as oil spreading and surface activity measurements were utilized to screen the biosurfactant-producing bacteria isolated from the brine of a specific oil reservoir located in the southwest of Iran. The isolates identified by 16S rDNA and biochemical analysis as Enterobacter cloacae (Persian Type Culture Collection (PTCC)...