The influence of atmospheric conditions on the migration of diesel fuel spilled in soil

Abstract

Abstract:The most common chemical's spills in typical transportation accidents are those with petroleum products such as diesel fuel, the consequence of which is an extensive pollution of the soil. In order to plan properly fuel recovery from the soil, it is important to gain information about the soil depth which may be affected by pollutant and to predict the pollutant concentration in different soil layers. This study deals with the impact of basic atmospheric conditions, i.e. air temperature and humidity on the diesel fuel migration through the soil. The diesel fuel was spilled into columns (L = 30 cm; D = 4.6 cm) fi lled with sandy and clay soil samples, and its concentrations at various depths were measured after 11 days under various air temperature (20 and 40°C) and relative humidity (30-100%) conditions. The effects observed were explained by understanding physical processes, such as fuel evaporation, diffusion and adsorption on soil grains. The increase in temperature results in higher fuel evaporation loss and its faster vertical migration. The relative humidity effect is less pronounced but more complex, and it depends much on the soil type.

Archives of Environmental Protection

“…Although using free water is the best environmental and economical solution, the results are yet not sustaining. What makes the situation worst the temperature exciding 50°C at summer in the studied regions, which according to (Vuruna et al 2017) results in faster vertical migration of oil contaminants due to lowering its viscosity particularly in sandy soils because of their higher permeability. So the idea is to further study the effect of temperature using solar or sustainable energy making use of this high temperature.…”

Archives of Environmental Protection

“…Strongly adsorbed products stay longer in sediment and soil, while very soluble products like BTEX are quickly carried to the groundwater (Alvarez and Illman 2005). This difference in concentration between different study sites and their different depth levels can be attributed, in the first place, to the difference in the granulometric aspect (clay, and sand) of the different depth levels (Table 2), in addition to physicochemical characteristics such as humidity (Table 3) (Vuruna et al 2017)…”

Archives of Environmental Protection

“…Oil hydrocarbons are the prevailing pollutants of surface wastewater. Diesel fuels are complex mixtures that consist of a large number of hydrocarbons with C8 to C26 carbon molecules, as well as organic compounds of sulphur, nitrogen and oxygen (Vuruna et al 2017). Dieseline contains from 2,000 to 4,000 hydrocarbons and is a complex mixture of linear, branched and cyclic alkanes and polyaromatic compounds obtained from the middle fraction of the distillate during oil separation process Mauricio-Gutiérrez et al (2020).…”