Soybean Lecithin as a Dispersant for Crude Oil Spills

Abstract

The toxicity of oil spill dispersants to marine organisms has necessitated the search for alternative dispersant formulations that are environmentally benign. Soybean lecithin, a well-known surface active agent in the food industry, is effective at stabilizing oil-in-water emulsions. In addition to its excellent emulsification properties, it is biodegradable, less toxic than the traditional chemical dispersants, and ecologically acceptable. In this study, soybean lecithin was used to formulate dispersants for crude oil spill application. Soybean lecithin was fractionated into phosphatidylinositol (PI) and phosphatidylcholine (PC) enriched fractions using ethanol. The fractionated PI was deoiled and characterized with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The crude soybean lecithin (CL) and the fractionated PI and PC were solubilized in water and their dispersion effectiveness determined using the U.S. EPA's baffled flask test. The dispersion effectiveness of these solubilized dispersants was compared with that of solid crude lecithin (SL). The dispersion effectiveness of PC was found to be higher than those of SL, CL, and PI at all the surfactant-to-oil ratios (SORs) tested. However, when the fractionated PI was modified or "functionalized" (FPI) with additional hydroxyl groups to alter the hydrophilic−lipophilic balance (HLB), its dispersion effectiveness improved remarkably and was higher than that of PC. At higher SORs (>28 mg/g), the dispersion effectiveness of FPI was slightly higher than that of solubilized DOSS and Tween 80 in propylene glycol. The dispersion effectiveness of PC and FPI on Texas (TC) and light crude (LC) oil samples were almost the same. PC and FPI performed better at the higher salinity of 3.5 wt % than the lower salinities of 0.8 and 1.5 wt %. The findings from this study suggest that dispersants formulated from fractionated PI and PC have the potential to replace traditional dispersant formulations.

Characterization of biosurfactant lipopeptide and its performance evaluation for oil-spill remediation

“…Dispersants were globally applied to physico-chemically enhance the dispersion of oil in water and were assumed to stimulate oil biodegradation by indigenous microorganisms and to reduce the environmental impact of oil spills. 1,2 Since the 1960s, 3,4 chemical dispersants have been applied as an emergency response to oil spills in marine ecosystems, 5 and have showed effectiveness at removing oil slicks from the coast. 3,6,7 However, most of the chemically synthesized dispersants are inherently toxic to various aquatic species and hardly biodegradable in the natural environment.…”

“…3,6,7 However, most of the chemically synthesized dispersants are inherently toxic to various aquatic species and hardly biodegradable in the natural environment. 2,8 The application of chemical dispersants in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill also raised concerns regarding the toxicity and the potential environmental impact, 9,10 and caused a debate about the effectiveness of chemical dispersants on the rates of oil biodegradation. 11 Biosurfactants are promising dispersants in oil-spill remediation, owning to their environmentally friendly and biodegradable properties.…”

“…Higher DE at higher salinity was observed for anionic biosurfactants, which can be attributed to the electrostatic repulsion between polar head groups reduced by ions, and a close-packed arrangement of surfactant molecules at the oilwater interface were formed. 2 Mortalities of zebrash under different concentrations of different surfactants were shown in Fig. 3.…”

Selective Cooperation with Liquids for Environmentally Friendly and Comprehensive Oil–Water Separation

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Ah ydrophobic3Dm aterialh aving smart relationship with oil under water (having both water affinity and water repellency in absence and presence of oil), is developed here using as calable and facile 1,4-conjugate addition reaction between acrylate and amine groups at ambient conditions without using any catalyst. [4][5][6][7] Nevertheless, after ar eport from Jiang and co-workers in 2004, [8] the specially designed interfaces that selectively attract the oil phase but extremelyr epel water (superhydrophobicity) phase in air,a re emerging as ap rospective avenue for removing oil from oil-water mixtures. This unprecedented super-oil-absorbance property remained intact in diverses cenarios, including extremeso ft emperature (100 and 10 8C), pressure (184.7 mbar), and prolonged (7 days) exposures to extremes of pH (1 and 12), surfactants-contaminated (dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide/sodium dodecyl sulfate, DTAB/SDS,1m m)w ater,a rtificial sea water,e tc.

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“…[1][2][3] Generally,t he traditional oil-water separation approaches involvet ime-consuming manual processing, high-energyc onsumption, and are inappropriate for comprehensiveo il-water separation at diverse locationso fi nterest. [4][5][6][7] Nevertheless, after ar eport from Jiang and co-workers in 2004, [8] the specially designed interfaces that selectively attract the oil phase but extremelyr epel water (superhydrophobicity) phase in air,a re emerging as ap rospective avenue for removing oil from oil-water mixtures. [8][9][10][11][12] This bio-inspired superhydrophobicity that extremely repels water is highly capable of providing materials (membrane, absorbent, etc.)…”