The oil industry has been a primary source of energy for years but it can also lead to the emission of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). VOCs play a major role in the formation of photochemical oxidants and can be harmful to the ecosystem. Thereupon, effective mitigation and control strategies of air pollution have recently become more prominent for the oil industry. To orchestrate these strategies, the understanding of how air pollutants disperse from organic storage tanks should be improved. In this study, a modeling framework was developed to estimate in-field two-month average VOC concentrations caused by crude oil tanks. Firstly, United States Environmental Protection Agency's (US-EPA) Tanks 9b software was used to estimate emission rates from tanks. Then, Gaussian Dispersion Formulation was applied to simulate VOC dispersion. Following this, an in-house equation was used to represent the average VOC concentration at selected receptor locations. Moreover, in-field VOC measurement (passive sampling method) was also conducted to evaluate model performance. The normalized root-mean-square deviation between the measured and estimated VOC concentration was found to be 0.15. There was also a strong correlation between the two data with a correlation coefficient of 0.96. Overall, the results suggest the model statistically performed well with a 95% confidence interval. Due to its effectiveness and time-saving application, the method described in this study can be used to develop air pollution mitigation plans for organic storage facilities.
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have detrimental health effects such as cancer and mutation, abound in rivers. To employ effective mitigation strategies, accurate determination of PAHs in water bodies is essential. In this study, PAHs in the Batman River were investigated. Specifically, the study has two aims: (1) determining whether there are any statistical differences between the Liquid-liquid (LL) and Solid-phase (SP) extraction techniques of PAHs; and (2) investigation of PAH contamination and the potential sources of PAHs in the Batman River. Methodologically, four different samples were collected and one part of each sample was extracted with the LL and the other part with the SP. Later, each extract was analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Subsequently, the analysis results of the LL and SP extracts were statistically compared. PAH concentrations were 85.5 and 76.7 ng/L for the means of the LL and SP extracts, respectively. Based on the t-test, the differences between these two means were not significant (p-value=0.684 > 0.05). Similarly, no statistical differences were observed between the analysis results of the LL and SP extracts for any individual PAHs. As for the source analysis, the results indicated that road vehicles and coal combustion were the possible sources of PAH contamination in the river. This study provides the first data set for PAH contamination in the Batman River.
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