Frank Richard A, Kavanagh Richard, Burnison B Kent, Headley John V, Peru Kerry M, Der Kraak Glen Van, Solomon Keith R
Centre for Toxicology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1.
Chemosphere. 2006 Aug;64(8):1346-52. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2005.12.035. Epub 2006 Feb 15.
The Athabasca oil sands of Alberta, Canada contain an estimated 174 billion barrels of bitumen. During oil sands refining processes, an extraction tailings mixture is produced that has been reported as toxic to aquatic organisms and is therefore collected in settling ponds on site. Investigation into the toxicity of these tailings pond waters has identified naphthenic acids (NAs) and their sodium salts as the major toxic components, and a multi-year study has been initiated to identify the principal toxic components within NA mixtures. Future toxicity studies require a large volume of a NA mixture, however, a well-defined bulk extraction technique is not available. This study investigated the use of a weak anion exchanger, diethylaminoethyl-cellulose (DEAE-cellulose), to remove humic-like material present after collecting the organic acid fraction of oil sands tailings pond water. The NA extraction and clean-up procedure proved to be a fast and efficient method to process large volumes of tailings pond water, providing an extraction efficiency of 41.2%. The resulting concentrated NA solution had a composition that differed somewhat from oil sands fresh tailings, with a reduction in the abundance of lower molecular weight NAs being the most significant difference. This reduction was mainly due to the initial acidification of tailings pond water. The DEAE-cellulose treatment had only a minor effect on the NA concentration, no noticeable effect on the NA fingerprint, and no significant effect on the mixture toxicity towards Vibrio fischeri.
加拿大艾伯塔省的阿萨巴斯卡油砂中估计含有1740亿桶沥青。在油砂精炼过程中，会产生一种萃取尾矿混合物，据报道这种混合物对水生生物有毒，因此被收集在现场的沉降池中。对这些尾矿池水毒性的调查已确定环烷酸（NAs）及其钠盐是主要的有毒成分，并且已经启动了一项为期多年的研究，以确定NA混合物中的主要有毒成分。未来的毒性研究需要大量的NA混合物，然而，目前还没有一种明确的批量提取技术。本研究考察了使用弱阴离子交换剂二乙氨基乙基纤维素（DEAE-纤维素）去除油砂尾矿池水有机酸馏分后残留的类腐殖质物质。NA提取和净化程序被证明是一种快速有效的处理大量尾矿池水的方法，提取效率为41.2%。所得浓缩NA溶液的组成与油砂新鲜尾矿略有不同，其中低分子量NAs丰度的降低是最显著的差异。这种降低主要是由于尾矿池水的初始酸化。DEAE-纤维素处理对NA浓度影响较小，对NA指纹图谱无明显影响，对混合物对费氏弧菌的毒性也无显著影响。
