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Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea
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 mo...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8849300/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35171676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl7605 |
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author | Freeman, Danielle Haas Ward, Collin P. |
author_facet | Freeman, Danielle Haas Ward, Collin P. |
author_sort | Freeman, Danielle Haas |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8849300 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88493002022-03-04 Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea Freeman, Danielle Haas Ward, Collin P. Sci Adv Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences 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. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8849300/ /pubmed/35171676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl7605 Text en 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). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences Freeman, Danielle Haas Ward, Collin P. Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
title | Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
title_full | Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
title_fullStr | Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
title_full_unstemmed | Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
title_short | Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
title_sort | sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea |
topic | Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8849300/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35171676 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl7605 |
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