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DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPOSITION DATABASE FOR SELECTED MULTICOMPONENT OILS
Citation:
Wang, Z., B. Hollebone, M. Fingas, B. Fieldhouse, L. Sigouin, M. Landriault, J. Noonan, AND J W. Weaver. DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPOSITION DATABASE FOR SELECTED MULTICOMPONENT OILS. Presented at International Oil Spill Conference, Vancouver, Canada, April 7-10, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
The current focus is to 1.) develop, distribute, and support the FRAMES-3MRA modeling technology, 2) to apply the FRAMES-3MRA modeling technology for the purposes of executing national and site-specific risk assessments, 3) to complete model application case studies to explore model performance issues, such as, model validation, 5) to collaborate with other Federal Agencies in an effort to leverage expertise and resources associated with common modeling interests, and 6) to monitor ongoing developments at the Office of Solid Waste and within the environmental modeling community in an effort to identify new needs for science modules and locate or develop solutions within the FRAMES 3MRA modeling system.
Description:
During any oil spill incident, the properties of the spilled oil, including its chemical composition, physical properties, and changes due to weathering, are immediately important. U.S. EPA is currently developing new models for application to environmental problems associated with accidental spills and releases of petroleum hydrocarbons and other oil products.
Multicomponent composition data, needed as input for simulation with the EPA Research Object-Oriented Oil Spill (ERO3S) model, is unavailable in the literature due to the complexity and expense of making the measurements. Environment Canada has previously developed a database on various physical and chemical properties of crude oils and petroleum products. In this cooperative project, 10 oils and refined products identified by the U.S. EPA are characterized by the oil spill research lab of Emergencies Science and Technology Division to extend the existing information in the database. Measured oil physical properties include API gravity, density, sulphur content, water content, flash point, pour point, viscosity, surface tension, adhesion, the equation for predicting evaporation, emulsion formation, and simulated boiling point distribution. The chemical composition of the oils include hydrocarbon groups, volatile organic compounds, n-alkane distribution, distribution of alkylated polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) homologues and other EPA priority PAHs, biomarker concentrations. This project will provide the most complete and comprehensive database for the selected multicomponent oils to date. The new composition data will be integrated into the existing Environment Canada oil properties database. The results will be available to the public both on the world wide web and as a database on disc.