TY - JOUR ID - 55677 TI - The Role of Clay as a Natural Geological Barrier in Oil Pollution Control of Abadan Refinery JO - Scientific Quarterly Journal of Geosciences JA - GSJ LA - en SN - 1023-7429 AU - Shadizadeh, S. R. AU - Zoveidavianpoor, M. AD - Abadan College of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran. Y1 - 2010 PY - 2010 VL - 19 IS - 76 SP - 177 EP - 186 KW - Clay KW - Natural Barriers KW - Environment KW - Petroleum Pollution KW - Underground Waters KW - Underground Layers KW - Abadan Refinery DO - 10.22071/gsj.2010.55677 N2 - Abadan Refinery is located between Arvandrud and Bahmanshir rivers. These rivers supply urban, industrial and agricultural water of Abadan city. During the war between Iran and Iraq, leakage of large amounts of oil and its refined products from storage tanks, pipe lines, and refinery units of Abadan refinery to surrounding environment occurred. Also, leakage of petroleum and its products during the operation of Abadan refinery to surrounding environment led to conduct a research for determination of oil pollution extension of underground layers in Abadan refinery. Utilization of clays as natural geological barriers in environmental application and pollution control has been widely recognized. Abadan city was formed by recent Estuarine; these alluviums had a diverse variety in grain size and material. In the case of dominant presence of clay in underground layers, petroleum pollution control hypothesis of Abadan refinery is confirmed. In order to prove the above hypothesis the following items were conducted: 1) determination of material type of underground layers, 2) determination of petroleum pollution in underground layers and defining the oil saturation of the cores, and 3) determination of petroleum pollution in underground waters by one year sampling of underground waters along with measurement of piezometric head of groundwater monitoring wells. Location of twenty groundwater monitoring wells was investigated by considering petroleum leakage to surrounding area during and after war. Geological underground layers of Abadan refinery was determined from coring during drilling of the groundwater monitoring wells. The results of this investigation has shown that the material type of underground layers of Abadan refinery had a significant role to encapsulate petroleum leakage, in such a manner that leaked petroleum was observed in all of the drilled boreholes. On the other hand floated leaked petroleum on groundwater was observed just in two groundwater monitoring wells. These two polluted groundwater monitoring wells were shown to be from leakage of recent activities of Abadan refinery. Finally the results show that the majority of existing petroleum in underground layers of Abadan refinery was absorbed by clay UR - http://www.gsjournal.ir/article_55677.html L1 - http://www.gsjournal.ir/article_55677_dc56db585a354686cf8db0aeff65d536.pdf ER -