SCIENCE! An earthquake in Saudi Arabia caused a break in an oil pipeline that connected oil wells to shipping?
facilities in the Persian Gulf. A total of 120,000 gallons of crude oil(density 0.86 g/cm^3) spilled onto the desert soil. At first it was thought that 50,000 gallons eventually flowed into a reservoir that supplies drinking water to several communities.Later it was learned that only 35,000 gallons had flowed into the reservoir.The clean up crews removed the crude oil from the reservoir in a little over week.It took much longer to remove the crude oil from the sandy desert soil.After two weeks of continuous effort,, only 5000 gallons of oil had been removed.This area of the desert is irrigated and used for growing crops,,most of which were killed by the crude oil oil.It is not yet known if all if all the oil can be removed from the soil and if crops will grow in the region again.
a.- Which physical property of the crude oil allowed it to be easily cleaned uo from the water reservoir?
.b.- Why is the earthquake in the article considered to be a natural disaster?
c.-Calculate the percent deviation of the first estimate of the amount of crude oil in the reservoir compared to the actual amount. Including writing the equation,substituting values,and indicating the answer.
d.-What was the rate of the crude oil recovery from the soil in gallons per day for two week period described in the article? Show the work.
e.- Explain why the crude oil in the soil would be considered pollution.Be sure to use the term concentration in the answer.
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2 comments
Mikhael on March 30, 2010 at 11:23 am
a- Crude oil has a lower density than water, and it’s immiscible with water as well, so it floats over water and doesn’t get mixed up with it. This makes it easy to suck it off the surface of water in the reservoir.
b- The earthquake is a disaster because it harmed the communities that were supposed to get drinking water from the reservoir, and make use of the crops that now cannot be grown again. Now they are short on water and food because of the earthquake’s damage to the pipeline. The earthquake is the primary cause of the crude oil’s pollution in this case. (I suppose you could write more sentimental words here)
c- percent deviation = (50,000 – 35,000)/35,000 * 100 = 42.8%
d- rate of oil recovery = 5000 gallons/ 14 days = 357.1 gallons/day
e- I’m not 100% sure of this answer…. The oil is considered pollution because it caused permanent damage when its "concentration" in the soil increased and killed off most of the growing crop. The oil was extremely difficult to remove from the soil, and it’s not known whether all of the oil can be removed. If oil stays in the soil, the crops won’t grow, and oil can be present indefinitely. That’s why it’s permanent damage.
Hope this helped
Where do you get these questions from? Is this a homework?
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