Identification of oil contamination in process water using fluorescence excitation emission matrix (FEEM) and parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC).

Fuel oil is widely used within Eskom, a power generation company in South Africa. Eskom's coal-fired power stations use up to 30,000 L of fuel oil per hour during a cold start-up, a consequence of which results in oil leaks to the dams. Oil contamination in water treatment plants causes irreversible membrane fouling, requiring costly replacement. This research work focused on the development of a rapid method for the identification of low concentrations of the water-soluble oil component fraction of crude fuel oil. For the developed method, known volumes of the water-soluble fraction of crude oil were spiked into various matrices of process water. FEEMs were collected using the patented HORIBA Aqualog spectrometer and data were modelled with PARAFAC. The results were well described with a four-component model, which included an oil component and three natural organic matter components, with a split-half validation match of 90%. The oil component was verified using linear regression of the PARAFAC component scores yielding an R2 value of 0.98. From the scores, a qualitative pass/fail test was developed such that process water can be analysed and subjected to the model to indicate the presence of oil contamination beyond a damaging threshold. © 2024 The Authors This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying, adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Citation

Heena Madhav, Adam Gilmore. Identification of oil contamination in process water using fluorescence excitation emission matrix (FEEM) and parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC). Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research. 2024 Aug;90(3):908-919

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PMID: 39141041

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