Sorption and desorption of crude oil components from a highly absorptive medium

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Canada's oil and gas (O&G) industry is a major driver of Canada's economy. Annually, this sector generates more than $52B of Canada's Gross Domestic Product and employs ca. 550,000 Canadians. On a global scale, one quarter of all Canadian exports are attributable to the O&G sector. Today, Canada exports ca. 3M barrels per day of oil and projected to double by 2030. While the economic benefits of the O&G sector are clear, it is important that O&G activities do not negatively impact the environment. Despite best practices, chemical spills into the aquatic environment are inevitable. Managing the extent of deleterious environmental effects from spills is governed, in part, by the efficacy of remediative technologies. Imbibitive Technologies has been marketing an absorbent material, Imbiber Beads, globally for over 15 years that is an effective tool in crude oil spill and clean-up response scenarios. Despite their global success, there are still two important scientific questions that remain unclear. First, what are the sorption kinetics of crude oil components to the Imbiber Beads and, second, can the absorbed components captured by the beads be released under elevated temperatures? In collaboration with Imbibitive Technologies, we are proposing to address these two important science data-gaps. Sorption kinetics will be elucidated by exposing the targeted chemicals to the beads and over time measuring the concentration of analytes in the water. Thermal desorption of targeted chemicals from the beads will be achieved by carefully heating the beads containing the sorbed chemicals, trapping and analyzing the vapors from a sorptive media. The benefit of this research to Imbibitive Technologies is that it will enable them to market a product that closes the loop on O&G chemicals accidentally discharged into the environment. This will be the only product that can make this claim.