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Formation and weathering assessment of oil-suspended sediment aggregates through a laboratory investigation

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Abstract

Formation of oil-suspended sediment aggregates (OSAs) is believed to be one of the natural cleaning processes in the marine environment. In this study, we have investigated the formation processes of OSAs under different mixing periods (continuous mixing and with the addition of sediments in between), oil-sediment ratios (1:1, 1:2 and 2:1) and crude oils (Arabian Light (AL), Kuwait (KW) and Murban (MB)). The results revealed that size of OSAs significantly increased (up to ≈ 1.41 mm) with the addition of sediments. Aggregates (total 36) were extracted for n-alkanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to quantify and assess their weathering and toxic levels. The maximum n-alkane depletion was 84% (111-02), 94% (212-02) and 84% (321-02) and PAH depletion was ≈ 72% (111-02), 79% (212-02) and 81% (311-03) for the OSAs of AL, KW and MB crude oils, respectively, for the different samples considered, indicating that n-alkanes were depleted relatively higher than the PAHs. The highest depletion of both n-alkane and PAHs has occurred in OSAs of 10-h continuous mixing. The depletion of both n-alkane and PAHs reduced after the addition of sediments, however, escalated the growth of OSAs, resulting in bigger size OSAs. The concentration of PAHs of all 36 OSAs is greater than 5000 ng/g, indicating very high PAH pollution. Though the formation of OSAs helps in cleaning the spill sites, the carcinogenic threat to the marine ecosystem caused by these OSAs cannot be ignored.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Director, CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, for permitting to carry out this work. We acknowledge Dr. Ravail Singh for providing the microscope facility. We also thank Athish, Sonam and Chayanika for their support during sample processing. This is CSIR-NIO contribution number 6638.

Funding

This study is funded by the Department of Science and Technology through Climate Change Programme to VS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR – National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, Goa, 403 004, India

    V. Suneel

  2. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400 076, India

    S. Sathish Kumar & R. Balaji

  3. Environmental Science Center, Qatar University, P.O Box: 2713, Doha, Qatar

    P. Vethamony

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  1. V. Suneel
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  2. S. Sathish Kumar
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Contributions

VS—concept of the work, funding acquisition, execution of the experiments, analysis, interpretation of data, and finalization of manuscript

SS—experiments, data processing, drawing figures, initial draft of the manuscript

RB—conceptualization, interpretation of data, preparation of initial draft of the manuscript

PV—initial draft of the manuscript, review and editing of the manuscript

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Correspondence to V. Suneel.

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Suneel, V., Sathish Kumar, S., Balaji, R. et al. Formation and weathering assessment of oil-suspended sediment aggregates through a laboratory investigation. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 17181–17199 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11813-w

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