Have
you ever wondered about what is really in
the food that you eat, the air that you
breathe, the water that you drink? Is the
garbage you dispose of really garbage? Well,
these are some of the questions which Dr.
Ivan Chang-Yen at the Department of Chemistry,
wrestles with as he pursues his work.
For
more than 25 years, Dr. Chang-Yen has been
working on lead-based products and their
impact on our health and on our children’s
health. He has been examining areas as diverse
as food contaminants and human health, crude
oil fingerprinting and the feasibility of
recycling waste oil from fast food outlets.
Let
us take crude oil fingerprinting: what is
this really about? The process of determining
where a hydrocarbon residue originated is
what we call “fingerprinting.” Through this
process it is possible to determine the
responsible party for an oil spill no matter
where it occurs.
Fingerprinting
of crude oils is a complex task, involving
the application of tested chemical methods
to generate information. It works very much
like a human fingerprint does for an individual.
The difference between one fingerprint and
another allows an oil spill to be clearly
distinguished, characterized and linked.
Once
oils can be distinguished by its fingerprint,
a database of fingerprints of all available
oils can be developed. Then, in the event
of an oil spill, the fingerprint of the
spilt oil can be matched to the oils in
the database. If a match is found, then
the source of the spill can be identified
and action taken to recover costs of cleanup,
repairs etc. caused by the spilt oil. Similarly,
it may help to remove suspicion from those
not responsible for the spill. Conversely,
if there is no match with the database oils,
it may be due to the fingerprint of the
spilt oil being altered by weathering, mixing
with other oils, or from a source not available
for fingerprinting e.g. tanker ballasting
on the high seas.
Fingerprinting
is of great value to the world and vital
to the Caribbean. For instance if a database
of crude oils that pass through the Caribbean
can be developed, this can be an important
tool in the identification of spilt oils
that impact our marine environments, damage
property and cause loss of business. It
can also strengthen the enforcement of our
National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCP),
and provide strong disincentives against
oil pollution. At present, the Institute
of Marine Affairs provides an oil fingerprinting
service to local authorities in the event
of oil spills, but employs a different system
of fingerprinting to that used by UWI. It
is likely that collaboration between the
institutions can considerably strengthen
this system, for the benefit of T&T and
the wider Caribbean.
Oil
fingerprinting systems can also be used
to determine whether oils from different
wells in an oilfield are derived from a
common source. This can have benefits for
farm-out programmes, in which one company
may lease its wells for enhanced oil recovery
by another company. Knowledge of the similarity
of oils may thus allow rationalization of
leasing programmes of wells that may be
linked to the same reservoir. Fingerprinting
systems may also be further refined and
used in the matching of oils in drilling
cores, with those from wells already producing
in the same area.
It
is also possible that the methodologies
developed by Dr. Chang-Yen can be extended
to other sample types, such as comparisons
of sources of natural gas, tracing the origins
of the asphalt at the Pitch Lake and testing
the authenticity of edible oils to detect
adulteration. Collaboration with the Department
of Chemical Engineering is planned in some
of these areas. Thus, the development of
fingerprinting systems has a wide range
of applications of local and international
benefit.
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