Environmental Engineering Program, Department of Civil Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA.
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai, India.
Sci Total Environ. 2018 Jun 1;626:795-806. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.01.128. Epub 2018 Feb 19.
Chennai, a coastal city in India with a population of over 7 million people, was impacted by a major oil spill on January 28th 2017. The spill occurred when two cargo ships collided about two miles away from the Chennai shoreline. The accident released about 75 metric tons of heavy fuel oil into the Bay of Bengal. This case study provides field observations and laboratory characterization data for this oil spill accident. Our field observations show that the seawalls and groins, which were installed along the Chennai shoreline to manage coastal erosion problems, played a significant role in controlling the oil deposition patterns. A large amount of oil was trapped within the relatively stagnant zone near the seawall-groin intersection region. The initial cleanup efforts used manual methods to skim the trapped oil and these efforts indeed helped recover large amount of oil. Our laboratory data show that the Chennai oil spill residues have unique fingerprints of hopanes and steranes which can be used to track the spill. Our weathering experiments show that volatilization processes should have played a significant role in degrading the oil during initial hours. The characterization data show that the source oil contained about 503,000 mg/kg of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and 17,586 mg/kg of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The field samples collected 6 and 62 days after the spill contained about 71,000 and 28,000 mg/kg of TPH and 4854 and 4016 mg/kg of total PAHs, respectively. The field samples had a relatively large percentage of heavy PAHs, and most of these PAHs are highly toxic compounds that are difficult to weather and their long-term effects on coastal ecosystems are largely unknown. Therefore, more detailed studies are needed to monitor and track the long term environmental impacts of the Chennai oil spill residues on the Bay of Bengal coastal ecosystem.
印度沿海城市金奈于 2017 年 1 月 28 日发生一起重大溢油事故。事故发生时，两艘货船在距离金奈海岸线约两英里处相撞。此次事故导致约 75 公吨重质燃料油泄入孟加拉湾。本案例研究提供了该溢油事故的现场观测和实验室特征描述数据。我们的现场观测表明，为应对海岸侵蚀问题而在金奈海岸线安装的防波堤和突堤在控制油污沉积模式方面发挥了重要作用。大量油污被滞留在防波堤-突堤交叉区域附近相对静止的区域内。最初的清理工作使用人工方法撇除被困油污，这些努力确实有助于回收大量油污。我们的实验室数据表明，金奈溢油残留物具有独特的藿烷和甾烷指纹，可以用来追踪溢油事件。我们的风化实验表明，挥发过程在最初几个小时内对降解油污起到了重要作用。特征描述数据表明，源油中总石油烃（TPH）含量约为 503000 毫克/千克，总多环芳烃（PAHs）含量为 17586 毫克/千克。溢油发生 6 天和 62 天后采集的现场样品中 TPH 含量分别约为 71000 毫克/千克和 28000 毫克/千克，总 PAHs 含量分别约为 4854 毫克/千克和 4016 毫克/千克。现场样品中重质 PAHs 的比例相对较大，其中大部分 PAHs 是毒性很高的化合物，难以风化，其对沿海生态系统的长期影响在很大程度上尚不清楚。因此，需要进行更详细的研究来监测和追踪金奈溢油残留物对孟加拉湾沿海生态系统的长期环境影响。
