Evolution of tar ball aggregates in Caspian Sea: Implications of connectionist tools linked with image analysis

Intensive petroleum activities in the Caspian Sea lead to a considerable oil pollution in the various parts of this region. Tar balls stranded on the south coast of the Caspian Sea evidently cause (and accelerate) this serious environmental threat. In this study, a poloxamine copolymeric surfactant...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnvironmental progress & sustainable energy Vol. 37; no. 6; pp. 2016 - 2025
Main Authors Sayyad Amin, Javad, Zendehboudi, Sohrab, Mohamadi, Esmat
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.11.2018
Subjects
hybrid smart model
oil pollution
size distribution
statistical analysis
tar balls
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ISSN1944-7442
1944-7450
DOI10.1002/ep.12886

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Summary:Intensive petroleum activities in the Caspian Sea lead to a considerable oil pollution in the various parts of this region. Tar balls stranded on the south coast of the Caspian Sea evidently cause (and accelerate) this serious environmental threat. In this study, a poloxamine copolymeric surfactant is used to agglomerate tar balls in a system containing the solvent, antisolvent, and Caspian Sea tar balls. This research work is conducted to determine the cumulative size distribution of tar balls in the presence of a poloxamine copolymer. The evolution of tar ball aggregates is experimentally and theoretically investigated and the steady‐state size distribution of the tar balls is estimated by Back Propagation Artificial Neural Network (ANN‐BP) and a new evolutionary algorithm, called Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA). The average size of tar ball aggregates increases with time and reaches a maximum value. It then declines and eventually approaches a steady‐state condition so that an almost constant size for the particles is attained. The statistical analysis shows a good agreement between the predicted values (obtained by the neural network combined with ICA, known as ANN‐ICA) and the real data for the steady‐state size distribution of the aggregates. This research study can considerably help to further understand evolution of tar balls (that hit the beaches) and consequently to find effective and economical ways for tar balls removal from the beaches. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 37: 1901–1907, 2018
ISSN:1944-7442
1944-7450
DOI:10.1002/ep.12886