The March 14th issue of C&E News contained an article entitled, "Oil Spill's Air Effects Probed". The article discusses research flights conducted by the Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's plane carrying environmental instrumentation to measure methane and other hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, 03, nitrogen oxides and other species.
It is not stated how much this operation cost, but I consider it silly research in these times of budget deficiencies and requirements to cut expenditures.
Crude oil is essentially a mixture of light hydrocarbons and heavy hydrocarbons. The total mixture is lighter than water and when an amount is released from below the surface, it remains cohesive and rises to the surface as a pool, where the lighter components evaporate into the atmosphere. This process continues until all of the light components are gone and the concentration decreases in time, as the heavier hydrocarbons remain. Those light hydrocarbons that dissipate into the atmosphere are dispersed very easily by wind currents and become widespread low concentration in the atmosphere. Therefore, the measurement of hydrocarbon concentration in the air above an oil spill at a specific time is not environmentally important, because it is not long-lasting.
Since this is information which we previously knew, it was unnecessary to conduct additional expensive research.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment