Assessing the Level of Pollution and Effectiveness of Soil Rehabilitation Technologies in Case of Crude Oil Spills

Abstract

It was shown that the use of methods of chemical analysis of oil-contaminated soils recommended for environmental control, showed no more than 50% of the mass of oil introduced into the soil, even in freshly contaminated samples. It was found that main errors were associated with the loss of light oil fractions during drainage of contaminated soil samples, incomplete extraction of pollutant oil from soils, ignoring high-molecular polar oil fractions, resinous and asphaltenic fractions when using these methods. A slight modification of the applied preparatory analytical methods was proposed, wich consisted in replacing the cold extraction of contaminated soil with a hot one, followed by additional weighing of the extracted chloroform prior swing absorption to assess the content of oil products, as well as soil samples for extraction at a natural moisture level without air- dry preconditionning. It was concluded that these changes significantly reduce analytical errors and increase the reliability of monitoring soil pollution during crude oil spills, as well as the effectiveness of rehabilitation actions.