Abstract
Marine oil snow (MOS) potentially forms after an oil spill. To fully understand the mechanism of its formation, we investigated the effects of suspended particles (SP) and dispersants on MOS formation of crude oil and diesel oil by laboratory experiments. In the crude oil experiment, the SP concentration of 0.2 g L–1 was more suitable for crude oil MOS formation. The addition of dispersants significantly stimulated N and TV during MS/MOS formation of SP at 0.4 g L–1 and 0.8 g L–1 concentration (p < 0.05). Without SP, the dispersants also stimulated crude oil MOS formation. Furthermore, the concentration of SP had a significantly positive effect on the reduction of the total amount of N-alkanes (p < 0.05). In the diesel oil experiment, after adding dispersants to diesel oil, the maximum N, Dm, and TV values at a SP concentration of 0.2 g L–1 were significantly higher than those at 0.4 g L–1 and 0.8 g L–1 (p < 0.05). Besides, we found that dispersants stimulated MOS formation in diesel oil at a SP concentration of 0.2 g L–1. However, the dispersants had an inhibitory effect on diesel oil MOS formation without SP. Notably, the MOS formed by diesel oil appeared white, unlike the black MOS associated with crude oil. These findings are important for the environmental impact of oil spills and elevated SP concentrations.
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The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This work was supported by the Key Deployment Project of the Centre for Ocean Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Grant number COMS2019J05.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by XL, XLiu, and RG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by XL. Resources and funding acquisition were supported by XH, CT, QX, JG, and CW. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Lv, X., Liu, X., Geng, R. et al. Effects of suspended particles and dispersants on marine oil snow formation of crude oil/diesel oil. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 119847–119862 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30670-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30670-x