scholarly journals The Influence of Crude Oil on Mechanistic Detachment Rate Parameters

Geosciences ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manar Hasan ◽  
Abdul-Sahib Al-Madhhachi

Iraqi soil contamination greatly influenced soil detachment. Previous researchers have not been able to predict the influence of crude oil soil contamination on either the mechanistic dimensional detachment parameter b0 or the threshold parameter b1 of the mechanistic detachment model (Wilson model). The aims of this research were (1) to investigate the influence of crude oil on deriving Wilson model parameters, b0 and b1, with two setups at different scales and different soil moisture contents and (2) to predict b0 and b1 in crude oil contaminated dry soils with varying levels of contamination. The “mini” JET apparatus was implemented under laboratory conditions for soil specimens packed at both a small (standard mold) and a large (in-situ soil box) scale. The results showed an inverse correlation between b0 and water content for clean soil. No correlation between b0 and soil moisture content was observed for contaminated soils. There was a huge reduction in the b0 value as the contamination time increased compared to the clean soil. This was related to the role crude oil plays in soil stabilization. Crude oil contamination significantly increased lead contamination level while slightly increasing the pH and total organic carbon. The influence of crude oil on mechanistic soil detachment can be predicted with a priori JET experiments on soils without crude oil based on crude oil parameters.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-125
Author(s):  
Hossein Sadighi ◽  
Mohammad Ali Rowshanzamir

The high exposure of areas in the vicinity of oil plants and refineries to crude oil and oil product contaminations and the problems they cause for the physical expansion of these facilities underscore the importance of stabilization of oil-contaminated soils. Soil stabilization with cost-effective stabilizing agents is widely regarded as a simple and fast way of limiting the impacts of such contaminations. For decades, cement and lime have been the standard binders for soil remediation and stabilization applications, but with the increasing awareness about their environmental impact and the notion of sustainable development in general, there is now a growing interest in the use of cleaner alternatives based on new technologies for this purpose. In recent years, alkali-activated binders have been the subject of much interest because of their high strength and durability and limited environmental impacts. The soil treatment solution investigated in this study is the use of slag, which is a steel production byproduct mostly consisting of calcium and magnesium alumina silicates, in combination with two activators, namely sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate. Direct shear tests were performed on the crude oil contaminated soil specimens in order to determine the best alkali-activated designs and the effect of exposure time, slag content, and treatment time on the outcomes. The test results showed that adding 10% slag, 1.15% sodium silicate, and 1.61% sodium hydroxide (all by dry weight of soil) to the crude oil contaminated soil improved its cohesion and friction angle by 70% and 50% respectively.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
Precious Ehiomogue ◽  
Israel Ahuchaogu ◽  
Edwin Ahaneku

Bioremediation technologies are an environmentally friendly approach for the treatment of polluted soils. This review take a look at the various remediation efforts by various scientist to ameliorate the effect of crude oil contamination on the environment. Contamination of the total environment (air, soil, water and biota) by crude oil has become a paramount interest in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. With the frequent reports of oil spillages in the Niger Delta area, there is need to seek for a cost effective method for remediation of crude oil impacted soils. Studies have revealed variable impacts of oil toxicity on the environment and exposed populations. Soil contamination is caused mainly by the leakage of underground storage tanks and pipes. The most common conventional method for the remediation of contaminated soils is excavation followed by landfilling or incineration and other technologies that have been widely practiced. Contaminated sites pose a threat to human life due to severe health problems caused by adverse health effects from exposure to soil contamination. Once it is being detected, assessment strategies, type of sampling, chemical analyses, evaluation of parameters and its effect must be done. Several technologies and parameters have been developed to treat petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated soil but the problem still exists.


Soil Research ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 937 ◽  
Author(s):  
KG Tiller

The current knowledge of the pollution of Australian urban soils was reviewed with special reference to heavy metals. Increased community concern in recent years has resulted m a major upsurge in the investigation and rehabilitation of contaminated soils. This has led to a concomitant reassessment and development of regulatory procedures, and the establishment of some new environmental agencies. This review considers sources and extent of contamination, and approaches to the establishment of reference background levels in urban and rural areas. Assessment of contaminated sites has been largely based on overseas experience but site specific approaches relevant to Australian soils and climates are needed and are being developed by State authorities in collaboration with the Australian and New Zealand Environmental and Conservation Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council. The need for soil-based research and for standardized soil sampling procedures for site evaluation and action is stressed. Many opportunities exist for soil scientists in solving problems of soil contamination and rehabilitation.


2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 1131-1146 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Richter ◽  
A. W. Western ◽  
F. H. S. Chiew

Abstract Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and climate models are sensitive to evapotranspiration at the land surface. This sensitivity requires the prediction of realistic surface moisture and heat fluxes by land surface models that provide the lower boundary condition for the atmospheric models. This paper compares simulations of a stand-alone version of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) land surface scheme, or the Viterbo and Beljaars scheme (VB95), with various soil and vegetation parameter sets against soil moisture observations across the Murrumbidgee River catchment in southeast Australia. The study is, in part, motivated by the adoption of VB95 as the operational land surface scheme by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in 1999. VB95 can model the temporal fluctuations in soil moisture, and therefore the moisture fluxes, fairly realistically. The monthly model latent heat flux is also fairly insensitive to soil or vegetation parameters. The VB95 soil moisture is sensitive to the soil and, to a lesser degree, the vegetation parameters. The model exhibits a significant (generally wet) bias in the absolute soil moisture that varies spatially. The use of the best Australia-wide available soils and vegetation information did not improve VB95 simulations consistently, compared with the original model parameters. Comparisons of model and observed soil moistures revealed that more realistic soil parameters are needed to reduce the model soil moisture bias. Given currently available continent-wide soils parameters, any initialization of soil moisture with observed values would likely result in significant flux errors. The soil moisture bias could be largely eliminated by using soil parameters that were derived directly from the actual soil moisture observations. Such parameters, however, are only available at very few point locations.


Author(s):  
Tudararo-Aherobo Laurelta ◽  
Okotie Sylvester ◽  
Ataikiru Tega ◽  
Stephen Avwerosuoghene

Aim: The research aims to assess the biodegradability of crude oil polluted aquatic environment using indigenous hydrocarbon degrading bacteria. Place and Duration of Study: The research was conducted in the Environmental Management and Toxicology Laboratory, Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun, Delta State. Methodology: Hydrocarbon degrading bacteria species were isolated from hydrocarbon contaminated soils, screened and used for the degradation of crude oil. 5% and 10% crude oil were used to spike the test microcosm. Physicochemical parameters such as, pH, turbidity, total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) and bacterial counts of the bioremediated crude oil contaminated water were monitored on Day 0, 7 and 14. The biodegradation of the crude oil was done with the various bacteria isolates singly and as a consortium. Standard methods of American Public Health Association (APHA) and American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) were used for the analysis. Results: The isolates identified and used for the biodegradation process were, Azomonas sp., Enterococcus sp., Klebsiella sp. and Rhizobactersp. On day 14, in the microcosms with 5% crude oil contamination, Azomonas sp. recorded the highest turbidity reading of 328 ± 2.0 NTU, while Rhizobacter sp. recorded the least with 57.67 ± 0.58 NTU. The bacterial countswere between 7.68 ± 0.002 CFU/ml and 8.05 ± 0.10x 107 CFU/ml for Rhizobacter sp. and Azomonas sp. respectively.The crude oil was also degraded most in the microcosm treated with Azomonas sp. with a residual TPH concentration of 0.0013± 0.005 mg/l.For the 10% crude oil contaminated microcosms, TPH was also biodegraded most by Azomonas sp. with a value of 0.0026 ± 0.002mg/l. Turbidity readings were between 82 ± 1.0 NTU and 375.33 ± 0.57 NTU for Rhizobacter sp. and Azomonas sp. respectively. Bacterial counts were between (7.71± 0.012)x 107CFU/ml – (8.13± 0.001) x 107CFU/ml for Rhizobacter sp. and Azomonassp. respectively. Conclusion:There wasincreased microbial countsand decrease of residual crude oil concentration, indicating degradation of the crude oil by all the isolates.However, Azomonas sp. recorded the highest TPH degradation for both the 5% and 10% crude oil contaminated microcosms.Thus, findings from the research indicate that hydrocarbon degrading bacteria exist in our environment and can be used in the remediation of aquatic polluted environment.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1103-1141 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Fang ◽  
J. W. Pomeroy ◽  
C. J. Westbrook ◽  
X. Guo ◽  
A. G. Minke ◽  
...  

Abstract. The eastern Canadian Prairies are dominated by cropland, pasture, woodland and wetland areas. The region is characterized by many poor and internal drainage systems and large amounts of surface water storage. Consequently, basins here have proven challenging to hydrological model predictions which assume good drainage to stream channels. The Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling platform (CRHM) is an assembly system that can be used to set up physically based, flexible, object oriented models. CRHM was used to create a prairie hydrological model for the externally drained Smith Creek Research Basin (~400 km2), east-central Saskatchewan. Physically based modules were sequentially linked in CRHM to simulate snow processes, frozen soils, variable contributing area and wetland storage and runoff generation. Five "representative basins" (RBs) were used and each was divided into seven hydrological response units (HRUs): fallow, stubble, grassland, river channel, open water, woodland, and wetland as derived from a supervised classification of SPOT 5 imagery. Two types of modelling approaches calibrated and uncalibrated, were set up for 2007/08 and 2008/09 simulation periods. For the calibrated modelling, only the surface depression capacity of upland area was calibrated in the 2007/08 simulation period by comparing simulated and observed hydrographs; while other model parameters and all parameters in the uncalibrated modelling were estimated from field observations of soils and vegetation cover, SPOT 5 imagery, and analysis of drainage network and wetland GIS datasets as well as topographic map based and LiDAR DEMs. All the parameters except for the initial soil properties and antecedent wetland storage were kept the same in the 2008/09 simulation period. The model performance in predicting snowpack, soil moisture and streamflow was evaluated and comparisons were made between the calibrated and uncalibrated modelling for both simulation periods. Calibrated and uncalibrated predictions of snow accumulation were very similar and compared fairly well with the distributed field observations for the 2007/08 period with slightly poorer results for the 2008/09 period. Soil moisture content at a point during the early spring was adequately simulated and very comparable between calibrated and uncalibrated results for both simulation periods. The calibrated modelling had somewhat better performance in simulating spring streamflow in both simulation periods, whereas the uncalibrated modelling was still able to capture the streamflow hydrographs with good accuracy. This suggests that prediction of prairie basins without calibration is possible if sufficient data on meteorology, basin landcover and physiography are available.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 6425-6454
Author(s):  
H. Stephen ◽  
S. Ahmad ◽  
T. C. Piechota ◽  
C. Tang

Abstract. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) carries aboard the Precipitation Radar (TRMMPR) that measures the backscatter (σ°) of the surface. σ° is sensitive to surface soil moisture and vegetation conditions. Due to sparse vegetation in arid and semi-arid regions, TRMMPR σ° primarily depends on the soil water content. In this study we relate TRMMPR σ° measurements to soil water content (ms) in Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB). σ° dependence on ms is studied for different vegetation greenness values determined through Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). A new model of σ° that couples incidence angle, ms, and NDVI is used to derive parameters and retrieve soil water content. The calibration and validation of this model are performed using simulated and measured ms data. Simulated ms is estimated using Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model whereas measured ms is acquired from ground measuring stations in Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW). σ° model is calibrated using VIC and WGEW ms data during 1998 and the calibrated model is used to derive ms during later years. The temporal trends of derived ms are consistent with VIC and WGEW ms data with correlation coefficient (R) of 0.89 and 0.74, respectively. Derived ms is also consistent with the measured precipitation data with R=0.76. The gridded VIC data is used to calibrate the model at each grid point in LCRB and spatial maps of the model parameters are prepared. The model parameters are spatially coherent with the general regional topography in LCRB. TRMMPR σ° derived soil moisture maps during May (dry) and August (wet) 1999 are spatially similar to VIC estimates with correlation 0.67 and 0.76, respectively. This research provides new insights into Ku-band σ° dependence on soil water content in the arid regions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Trautmann ◽  
Sujan Koirala ◽  
Nuno Carvalhais ◽  
Andreas Güntner ◽  
Martin Jung

Abstract. So far, various studies aimed at decomposing the integrated terrestrial water storage variations observed by satellite gravimetry (GRACE, GRACE-FO) with the help of large-scale hydrological models. While the results of the storage decomposition depend on model structure, little attention has been given to the impact of the way how vegetation is represented in these models. Although vegetation structure and activity represent the crucial link between water, carbon and energy cycles, their representation in large-scale hydrological models remains a major source of uncertainty. At the same time, the increasing availability and quality of Earth observation-based vegetation data provide valuable information with good prospects for improving model simulations and gaining better insights into the role of vegetation within the global water cycle. In this study, we use observation-based vegetation information such as vegetation indices and rooting depths for spatializing the parameters of a simple global hydrological model to define infiltration, root water uptake and transpiration processes. The parameters are further constrained by considering observations of terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWS), soil moisture, evapotranspiration (ET) and gridded runoff (Q) estimates in a multi-criteria calibration approach. We assess the implications of including vegetation on the simulation results, with a particular focus on the partitioning between water storage components. To isolate the effect of vegetation, we compare a model experiment with vegetation parameters varying in space and time to a baseline experiment in which all parameters are calibrated as static, globally uniform values. Both experiments show good overall performance, but including vegetation data led to even better performance and more physically plausible parameter values. Largest improvements regarding TWS and ET were seen in supply-limited (semi-arid) regions and in the tropics, whereas Q simulations improve mainly in northern latitudes. While the total fluxes and storages are similar, accounting for vegetation substantially changes the contributions of snow and different soil water storage components to the TWS variations, with the dominance of an intermediate water pool that interacts with the fast plant accessible soil moisture and the delayed water storage. The findings indicate the important role of deeper moisture storages as well as groundwater-soil moisture-vegetation interactions as a key to understanding TWS variations. We highlight the need for further observations to identify the adequate model structure rather than only model parameters for a reasonable representation and interpretation of vegetation-water interactions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document