DETERMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VOLUME AND DIFFUSION AREAS OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS ON POROUS MEDIA

Abstract

One of the focused areas that transportation industry has to overcome is safe transportation of hazardous materials (HAZMATs). The low probability/high consequence nature of the HAZMAT transportation necessitates assessing the risk associated with HAZMAT transportation. To fully understand the potential consequences of HAZMAT accidents, estimating the diffusion area under different spill volumes for various HAZMATs is needed for a complete risk assessment. The main purpose of this study is to develop a relationship between the volume and the diffusion area for six analytes: 75% methanol, 70% ethanol, 36% HCL, 40% NaOH, Bakken, and Niobrara crude oils. We evaluate the distribution of the diffusion area with respect to 11 volume categories at five temperatures. This study also utilizes a circular chromatography approach to identify the diffusion area with respect to 11 volume levels. The findings of the study show that analytes diffusion can be explicitly explained by linear regression, polynomial regression, and power regression. Methanol at 0°C to 30°C, ethanol at 10°C and 20°C, HCL at 20°C, and NaOH at 10°C can be explained by linear regression, while methanol at 40°C can be explained by power regression. All other analytes followed polynomial regression trends. One notable finding is that NaOH, Bakken, and Niobrara crude oils' diffusion times decrease with temperature increase.