Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea
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Author(s)
Freeman, Danielle Haas
Ward, Collin P.
Date Issued
February 2022
Journal
Science Advances
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Freeman, Danielle Haas and Ward, Collin P. 2022. "Sunlight-driven dissolution is a major fate of oil at sea." Science Advances, 8 (7).
Version
Final published version
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.
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.
MIT Department
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl7605
