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Published on: August 28, 2019
Method development for aquatic ecotoxicological characterization factor calculation for hydrocarbon mixtures in life
Emilie Bamard1, Cécile Bulle, Louise Deschênes
1CIRAIG - École Polytechnique de Montréal, Chemical Engineering Department, Montréal, Québec, Canada. emilie.bamard@polymtl.ca
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
|August 2, 2011
Summary
This study developed new characterization factors (CFs) for petroleum mixtures, crucial for assessing ecosystem impacts. The findings show these new CFs are relevant for evaluating aquatic ecotoxicity, even with existing uncertainties in models.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Ecotoxicology
- Life-Cycle Assessment
Background:
- Pollutants often exist as complex mixtures, complicating environmental impact assessments.
- Current Life-Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods lack characterization factors (CFs) for evaluating impacts of organic mixtures on ecosystems.
- Petroleum products, common environmental contaminants, are complex mixtures with a shared narcosis mode of toxic action.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the development of new CFs for petroleum mixtures.
- To calculate CFs for constituents and fractions of a petroleum mixture using established methods.
- To derive CFs for the entire petroleum mixture using experimental data and estimations.
Main Methods:
- Calculated CFs for representative petroleum constituents and fractions using hydrocarbon block (HBM) and Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group (TPHWG) methods.
- Measured key physicochemical properties: soil-water partitioning, water solubility, degradation rates, octanol-water partitioning, and vapor pressure.
- Estimated molar weight and degradation kinetic constants in various environmental compartments (air, water, sediment).
Main Results:
- Developed CFs for petroleum mixtures, with the highest aquatic ecotoxicological CFs reaching up to 2.2 × 10(+07) PAF·m(3)·d/kg for freshwater emissions.
- Found no significant difference between CF distributions from different blocking methods and experimentally derived CFs for whole oil, considering model uncertainties.
- Demonstrated the relevance of CFs derived from various blocking methods for characterizing aquatic ecotoxicity of petroleum substances.
Conclusions:
- The developed CFs are relevant for assessing the aquatic ecotoxicity of petroleum mixtures.
- Existing blocking methods provide reliable CFs for petroleum substances within the uncertainties of LCIA.
- This research contributes to a more accurate environmental impact assessment of complex chemical mixtures.
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