PPS Blog

What if you could disperse oil spills in the sea, such as the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with air, sunlight, and an environmentally friendly botanical product?  These are the ingredients used in a recently published article from Professor Steven Suib and his team from the University of Conneticut, USA.  The study found that by adding a plant-based surfactant to a sample of synthetic seawater mixed with crude oil, pumping in air, stirring the sample and exposing it to ultraviolet light, the oil/water mixture quickly broke down into small particles.

The effects of visible and UV light on the characteristics and properties of Prudhoe Bay (PB) and South Louisiana (SL) emulsions were investigated to better understand the role of sunlight on the fate of spilled crude oils that form emulsions with a dispersant in the aquatic environment. The unique changes in physico-chemical properties of these emulsions as a result of photodegradation were investigated.

“Photodegradation of crude oil components can be an effective process for mitigating some of the damaging impacts resulting from oil spills in the aquatic environment,” the authors write. With the availability of modern, efficient UV-visible light sources, the process “may enable economic application of photodetoxification on a large-scale basis,” they say.

Interested in knowing more?  Read the article for free until March 20^th.

Effects of visible and UV light on the characteristics and properties of crude oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions
Homer C. Genuino, Dayton T. Horvath, Cecil K. King’ondu, George E. Hoag, John B. Collins and Steven L. Suib
Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., 2012, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C2PP05275J