Advanced Oxidation Processes for Water Remediation by Crude Oil Pollution PDF Download

Author: Mauro Tummolo
Publisher:
ISBN:
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Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid found in rock formations in the Earth consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds. Crude oil varies dramatically in colour, odour, composition and flow properties that reflects the diversity of its origin. Crude oil is arguably the world's most compositionally complex organic mixture, in terms of the number of chemically distinct constituents and is composed of unsaturated and saturated hydrocarbons, heteroatoms (such as N, S, and O). Contamination of soils and water by crude oil and other related products has become a worldwide problem. Petroleum hydrocarbons come into the environment through accidents, spills or leaks, from industrial releases, or as byproducts from commercial or domestic uses. The greatest problem is due to accidental spillage. In the accidental pollution, the diffusion of the petroleum interests the surface of the soil and groundwater. Petroleum hydrocarbons could go into water and soil by geochemical circulation, bringing secondary pollution, even intrude human through food chain. Since crude oil lies over the surface of water and soil, it suffers solar irradiation. Solar degradation is one of the natural ways for petroleum decontamination suggesting techniques based on light irradiation could be useful in the petroleum degradation processes. Light irradiation based technologies have been enhanced by using catalysts, the most effective and cheapest one in water purification being titanium dioxide (TiO2). In the last year, the combined use of ultrasonic irradiation (sonolysis) and photocatalysis to degrade organic pollutants in water (e.g., effluent of dye works) has been investigated, but no works were found in literature about oil polluted water remediation by using sonophotocatalysis. For this reason, the aim of this thesis work is to investigate on the possibility of oil polluted water remediation using Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs). A suspension petroleum/water was prepared in a Pyrex flask (10 L). The flask was filled with 7.0 L of distilled water, petroleum was added at the ratio 1/20 (oil/water) and the solution was magnetically stirred and then kept in the dark at room temperature to reach equilibrium up to 30 days. The degradation of crude oil dissolved in water was investigated employing either sonolysis at 20 kHz, or photocatalysis on TiO2, or simultaneous sonolysis and photocatalysis (i.e. sonophotocatalysis), as degradation techniques. For photocatalytic degradation, we used a 125W high-pressure mercury lamp (Philips, HPK), which provides a maximum energy at 365 nm with an emission range from 200 to 600 nm, and paper supported titanium dioxide as a catalyst. Sonication was carried out by using an ultrasound emitter with an electric power adjustable between 7 and 100 W. Crude oil and water soluble fraction samples were analyzed by using gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS), liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR), Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS), and fluorescence. The study of non polar compounds in irradiated crude oil by GC-MS showed an intensification in relative amount of the C13-C23 fractions and a reduction in relative amount of the C7-C12 fractions. By use of FT-ICR-MS we can see that the irradiation of crude oil produces an oxidation of oil with a particular effect of double bonds oxygenation. Non polar compounds present in crude oil water soluble fraction detected by GC-MS show a strong presence of branched alkanes and a good amount of linear and aromatic alkanes. All degradation methods utilized have generated an augmentation of C5 class and a decrease of C6-C9 classes of compounds. In analysis of polar molecules, we can see that total oxygenated compounds were subjected to a small decrease after photocatalysis and a sharp decrease after sonophotocatalytic degradation; no modifications were showed in sonolysis. In FT-ICR analysis an augmentation of compounds with low molecular weight was also found together with a light increase of number of oxygen atoms in the oxygenated species, as shown in Kendrick and van Krevelen diagrams. In conclusion, we can affirm that ultrasound affects the rate of the photocatalytic degradation of the organic pollutant; the simultaneous use of ultrasound and photocatalysis increased the efficiencies of the degradation process, and a synergistic effect between sonolysis and photocatalysis is normally observed.