Abstract
After oil spills occur, dispersed oil droplets can collide with suspended particles in the water column to form the oil-mineral aggregate (OMA) and settle to the seafloor. However, only a few studies have concerned the effect of chemical dispersant on this process. In this paper, the mechanism by which dispersant affects the surface properties of kaolin and the viscosity and oil-seawater interfacial tension (IFTow) of Roncador crude oil were separately investigated by small-scale tests. The results indicated that the presence of dispersant impairs the zeta potential and enhances the hydrophobicity of kaolin. The viscosity of Roncador crude oil rose slightly as the dosage of dispersant increased, while IFTow decreased significantly. Furthermore, the oil dispersion and OMA formation at different dispersant-to-oil ratio (DOR) were evaluated in a wave tank. When DOR was less than 1:40, the effect of dispersant on the dispersion of spilled oil was not obvious. With the increasing DOR, the effect became more pronounced, and the adhesion between oil droplets and kaolin was inhibited. The size ratio between oil droplets and particles is the significant factor for OMA formation. The closer the oil-mineral size ratio is to 1, the more difficultly the OMA forms.
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- OMA:
-
Oil-mineral aggregate
- D OR :
-
Dispersant-to-oil ratio
- D MR :
-
Dispersant-to-mineral ratio
- C EC :
-
Cation exchange capacity
- C A :
-
Contact angle
- I FT ow :
-
Oil-seawater interfacial tension
- v oil :
-
Oil viscosity
- O TE :
-
Oil trapping efficiency
- OSD :
-
Oil droplets size distribution
- V MD :
-
Volumetric mean diameter
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Dalian Branch of China Inspection & Certification Group Liaoning Co., Ltd, for providing Roncador crude oil.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42076167, 41807466), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (3132019148), the Liaoning Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (20170540099), and the Double First Class Construction (innovation) Project (BSCXXM027).
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LW: Laboratory experiments, writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing.
YY: Validation and data curation.
XD: Conceptualization and resources.
QZ: Methodology and supervision.
FS: Laboratory experiments.
YX: Laboratory experiments.
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Li, W., Yu, Y., Xiong, D. et al. Effects of chemical dispersant on the surface properties of kaolin and aggregation with spilled oil. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 30496–30506 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17746-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17746-2