Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea

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Abstract

Oxygenation reactions initiated by sunlight can transform insoluble components of crude oil at sea into water-soluble products, a process called photo-dissolution. First reported a half century ago, photo-dissolution has never been included in spill models because key parameters required for rate modeling were unknown, including the wavelength and photon dose dependence. Here, we experimentally quantified photo-dissolution as a function of wavelength and photon dose, making possible a sensitivity analysis of environmental variables in hypothetical spill scenarios and a mass balance assessment for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DwH) spill. The sensitivity analysis revealed that rates were most sensitive to oil slick thickness, season/latitude, and wavelength and less sensitive to photon dose. We estimate that 3 to 17% (best estimate 8%) of DwH surface oil was subject to photo-dissolution, comparable in magnitude to other widely recognized fate processes. Our findings invite a critical reevaluation of surface oil budgets for both DwH and future spills at sea.

Abstract

Sunlight-driven dissolution is quantitatively comparable with other oil fate processes and should be included in spill models.

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Carbon cycle. Sunlight controls water column processing of carbon in arctic fresh waters.

Rose Cory, Collin P Ward, Byron Crump … (2014)

Carbon in thawing permafrost soils may have global impacts on climate change; however, the factors that control its processing and fate are poorly understood. The dominant fate of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released from soils to inland waters is either complete oxidation to CO2 or partial oxidation and river export to oceans. Although both processes are most often attributed to bacterial respiration, we found that photochemical oxidation exceeds rates of respiration and accounts for 70 to 95% of total DOC processed in the water column of arctic lakes and rivers. At the basin scale, photochemical processing of DOC is about one-third of the total CO2 released from surface waters and is thus an important component of the arctic carbon budget.

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Application of ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) for water disinfection: A review.

Kai Song, Madjid Mohseni, Fariborz Taghipour (2016)

Ultraviolet (UV) disinfection is an effective technology for the inactivation of pathogens in water and is of growing interest for industrial application. A new UV source - ultraviolet light-emitting diode (UV-LED) - has emerged in the past decade with a number of advantages compared to traditional UV mercury lamps. This promising alternative raises great interest in the research on application of UV-LEDs for water treatment. Studies on UV-LED water disinfection have increased during the past few years. This article presents a comprehensive review of recent studies on UV-LEDs with various wavelengths for the inactivation of different microorganisms. Many inconsistent and incomparable data were found from published studies, which underscores the importance of establishing a standard protocol for studying UV-LED inactivation of microorganisms. Different UV sensitivities to UV-LEDs and traditional UV lamps were observed in the literature for some microorganisms, which requires further investigation for a better understanding of microorganism response to UV-LEDs. The unique aspects of UV-LEDs improve inactivation effectiveness by applying LED special features, such as multiple wavelengths and pulsed illumination; however, more studies are needed to investigate the influencing factors and mechanisms. The special features of UV-LEDs offer the flexibility of novel reactor designs for a broad application of UV-LED reactors.

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Review of flow rate estimates of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Timothy Crone, Justin Shaffer, Ömer Savaş … (2012)

The unprecedented nature of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill required the application of research methods to estimate the rate at which oil was escaping from the well in the deep sea, its disposition after it entered the ocean, and total reservoir depletion. Here, we review what advances were made in scientific understanding of quantification of flow rates during deep sea oil well blowouts. We assess the degree to which a consensus was reached on the flow rate of the well by comparing in situ observations of the leaking well with a time-dependent flow rate model derived from pressure readings taken after the Macondo well was shut in for the well integrity test. Model simulations also proved valuable for predicting the effect of partial deployment of the blowout preventer rams on flow rate. Taken together, the scientific analyses support flow rates in the range of ∼50,000-70,000 barrels/d, perhaps modestly decreasing over the duration of the oil spill, for a total release of ∼5.0 million barrels of oil, not accounting for BP's collection effort. By quantifying the amount of oil at different locations (wellhead, ocean surface, and atmosphere), we conclude that just over 2 million barrels of oil (after accounting for containment) and all of the released methane remained in the deep sea. By better understanding the fate of the hydrocarbons, the total discharge can be partitioned into separate components that pose threats to deep sea vs. coastal ecosystems, allowing responders in future events to scale their actions accordingly.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Danielle Haas Freeman:

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3937-1648

Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing - original draftRole: Writing - review & editing

Collin P. Ward:

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2979-0280

Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing - original draftRole: Writing - review & editing

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Adv

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Adv

Journal ID (publisher-id): sciadv

Journal ID (hwp): advances

Title: Science Advances

Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science

ISSN (Electronic): 2375-2548

Publication date Collection: February 2022

Publication date (Electronic, pub): 16 February 2022

Volume: 8

Issue: 7

Electronic Location Identifier: eabl7605

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.

[2 ]Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author. Email: cward@ 123456whoi.edu

Author information

Danielle Haas Freeman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3937-1648

Collin P. Ward https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2979-0280

Article

Publisher ID: abl7605

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl7605

PMC ID: 8849300

PubMed ID: 35171676

SO-VID: d48492f5-2d43-4b73-9633-d446e96e89b4

Copyright © Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 03 August 2021

Date accepted : 21 December 2021

Funding

Funded by: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship;

Award ID: 174530

Funded by: Fisheries and Oceans Canada Multi-Partner Research Inititiative;

Award ID: 1.06

Funded by: National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences;

Award ID: 1841092

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Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea

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Most cited references 65

Carbon cycle. Sunlight controls water column processing of carbon in arctic fresh waters.

Application of ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) for water disinfection: A review.

Review of flow rate estimates of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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