Cathodic protection of ships in brackish water

The operation of ice-going vessels depends on the condition of the hull surface. Corrosion increases the roughness of ship hull, which increases drag and fuel consumption. The hull surface smoothness is maintained by using coatings and cathodic protection. The cold brackish water is different from ocean water as it has lower salt content, lower conductivity, and higher concentration of dissolved oxygen. These factors mean that the design of the cathodic protection system for ship hulls requires different design values, such as protection current density and protected length, than those given in cathodic protection standards. In this paper, we have estimated the protection current density with polarization curves and the protected length by using Wagner number and dimension and conductivity scaling. In brackish water the protection current density was two times that in ocean water. The protected length in brackish water varied between 10 and 15% of that in ocean water. In poorly conducting brackish water, the current capacity of a cathodic protection system is used mostly for overcoming the solution resistance, not for delivering protection current.     

Potentiometric Determination of Non‐Ionic Surfactants by Liquid Membrane Electrodes

It is well known that non‐ionic surfactants (NIS) influence remarkably the potentiometric measurements with liquid membrane ion selective electrodes (ISEs), interfering particularly on performance of ISEs for earth‐alkali metals, for which the loss of selectivity with regard to alkali metals has been documented. These studies indicate that such interferences are due to the extraction of surfactants within the membrane, where a competition takes place between the originally present ionophore and the surfactant which also acts as a ligand for alkali metals. The interpretation of such phenomena enabled one to exploit this interference for analytical purposes by membrane/solution extraction experiment monitored by UV measurements and by impedance FRA analysis on coated wire electrodes. Using Ca/Mg ISEs based on the neutral ionophore ETH 4030, it has been established that the logarithm of the Ca/Mg over Na potentiometric selectivity constant is linearly correlated with the concentration of NIS like Tegopren 5863 and Triton X‐100. The proposed method has been applied for the development of a new potentiometric analytical procedure for the determination of Tegopren 5863 in synthetic seawater (SSW), ranging from 0.25 to 5 ppm. Our procedure consists in the exposure of the electrode to stirred SSW containing the surfactant; the progressive extraction of Tegopren 5863 causes a growth in electrode's sensitivity to Na⁺ and K⁺, losing selectivity for Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺. In turn this induces an increase of EMF, as all these ions are present in the studied matrix. The potential drift was monitored for 15 hours, showing that the process reaches thermodynamic equilibrium after about 12 hours of exposure. This method presents a value of 210 ppb of Tegopren 5863 as detection limit.     

The determination of copper at thin film electrodes by constant current stripping potentiometry

A comparison of the determination of copper by constant current stripping potentiometry (CCSP) at mercury and gold films has been carried out. The preferred solution conditions for the mercury film study were determined to be 0.1M ammonium acetate at pH 4.5 and 0.1M HCl for the gold film study. The influence of chloride on the stripping signal was investigated and it was found that for the mercury film conditions, well-formed stripping signals could be obtained up to a chloride concentration of 0.5 M which permitted the ready determination of copper in seawater. With the gold film, high chloride concentrations affected both the film stability and the glassy carbon surface and repeatable results were difficult to obtain. The optimized CCSP methods were applied to various aqueous samples including tap water, seawater, TCLP (acetic acid) extracts as well as TCLP extracts using groundwater and ocean water. Based on the results obtained for these various matrices, it was concluded that there are several advantages favoring the mercury film. The interference from organic components in the sample matrix on the general applicability of CCSP for the determination of copper at either a mercury or gold film is discussed.     

Flow injection kinetic spectrophotometric determination of trace amounts of Se(IV) in seawater

A simple, accurate, sensitive and selective flow injection catalytic kinetic spectrophotometric method for rapid determination of trace amounts of selenium is proposed in this paper. The proposed method is based on the accelerating effect of Se(IV) on the reaction of ethexlenediamine tetrecetic acid disodium salt (EDTA) and sodium nitrate with ammonium iron(II) sulfate hexahydrate in acidic media. The absorbance intensity was registered in this reaction solution at 440 nm. The calibration graph is linear in the range of 5 × 10⁻⁹-2 × 10⁻⁷ and 2 × 10⁻⁷-2 × 10⁻⁶ g ml⁻¹. The detection limit is 2 × 10⁻⁹ g ml⁻¹. The relative standard deviation was 3.4% for 5 × 10⁻⁸ g ml⁻¹ Se(IV) (n = 11), 2.7% for 5 × 10⁻⁷ g ml⁻¹ Se(IV) (n = 11). This method is very simple, rapid and suitable for automatic and continuous analysis. The presented system has been applied successfully to determination of Se(IV) of seawater samples.     

Determination of vitamin B<Subscript>1</Subscript> in seawater and microalgal fermentation media by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection

A highly sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic method with fluorescence detection has been developed for determination of vitamin B₁. Vitamin B₁ was converted into a fluorescent compound by treatment with hydrogen peroxide–horseradish peroxidase and the derivative was subsequently analyzed by HPLC on a Waters Spherisorb ODS2 column (250 mm×4.6 mm ID, 5 μm) with 40:60 methanol–pH 8.5 acetate buffer solution as mobile phase and fluorescence detection at 440 nm (with excitation at 375 nm). The calibration graph was linear from 5.00×10⁻¹⁰ mol L⁻¹ to 5.00×10⁻⁷ mol L⁻¹ for vitamin B₁ with a correlation coefficient of 0.9991 (n=9). The detection limit was 1.0×10⁻¹⁰ mol L⁻¹. The method was successfully used for determination of vitamin B₁ at pg mL⁻¹ levels in microalgal fermentation media and seawater after solid-phase extraction. Recovery was from 89 to 110% and the relative standard deviation was in the range 1.1 to 4.3%.     

Solar driven membrane pervaporation for desalination processes

We describe details of a solar driven pervaporation process for the production of desalinated water from highly contaminated waters. The membrane material is a polyetheramide-based polymer film of 40 μm thickness. This Solar Dew^® membrane is used in a tubular configuration in a direct solar membrane pervaporation process. The feed waters used in this study are untreated seawater and waste water that is simultaneously produced with the mineral oil extraction. In all cases retention of typical ions as sodium, chloride and calcium as well as specific problematic ions (arsenic, boron and fluoride) was higher than data reported for pressure driven membrane processes like NF and RO. The condensate quality was well within WHO limits for drinking water. A reduction of almost five orders of magnitude in conductivity between brine and condensate could be realized, producing condensate with conductivities of 5 μS/cm or lower. Laboratory experiments show that the measured fluxes are independent of severe fouling and virtually independent of concentration up to 100 g/l total solids.     

Numerical analysis of saltwater intrusion using B-spline boundary elements

Continuity of the derivatives of the main variable is an important feature to obtain an accurate representation of moving boundaries with discrete numerical methods, since the value and direction of the velocity are normally used to relocate the nodal points in a time-marching scheme. A recently developed formulation of the boundary element method using cubic B-splines provides up to C² continuity between adjacent elements. This formulation is applied in this work to saltwater intrusion problems in confined, leaky and unconfined aquifers.     

CHARACTERISTICS-FINITE ELEMENT METHODS FOR SEAWATER INTRUSION NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

0.IntroductionSeawaterintrusionisaproblemwhichhasmuchtodowithnaturalresourcesandenvironmentinmodernsociety,andisgettingmoreandmoreseriousinmanyajreasofourcountryandmailyothercountriesintheworldsuchasUSA,NetherlandsandIsrael.Theharmbroughtaboutbyseawaterintrusionisimmeasurable.Theareasintrudedbyseawaterareusuallycoastalalluvialplainswherethesoilusedtobefertile,groundwaterreservesarerichandagricultureiswell-developed.Becauseofseawaterintrusion,groundwaterbecomessaltedandunfitforpeopleandanimal…     

Saltwater Upconing and Decay Beneath a Well Pumping Above an Interface Zone

Saltwater, or brine, underlies freshwater in many aquifers, with a transition zone separating them. Pumping freshwater by a well located above the transition zone produces upconing of the latter, eventually salinizing the pumped water, forcing shut-off. Following the well’s shut-off, the upconed saltwater mound undergoes decay, tending to return to the pre-pumping regime. The FEAS code is used for the simulation of coupled density-dependent flow and salt transport involved in the upconing–decay process. In this code, the flow equation is solved by the Galerkin finite element method (FEM), while the advective–dispersive salt transport equation is solved in the Eulerian–Lagrangian framework. The code does not suffer from the instability constraint on the Peclet number. The code is used to investigate the transient upconing–decay process in an axially symmetric system and to discover how the process is affected by two major factors: the density difference factor (DDF) and the dispersivities. Simulation results show that under certain conditions, pumping essentially freshwater can be maintained for a certain time period, the length of which depends on the dispersivity values used. A recirculating flow cell may occur in the saltwater layer beneath the pumping well, widening the saltwater mound. The decay process is lengthy; it takes a long time for the upconed saltwater to migrate back to its original shape of a horizontal transition zone prior to pumping. However, the wider transition zone caused by hydrodynamic dispersion can never return to the initial one. This indicates that once a pumping well is abandoned because of high salinity, it can be reused for groundwater utilization only after a long time. It is also shown that the upconing–decay process is very sensitive to DDF, which, in our work, ranges from 0 (for an ideal tracer) to 0.2 (for brine). For a DDF of 0.025 (for seawater), local upconing occurs only for low iso-salinity surfaces, while those of high salt concentration remain stable after a short time. For an ideal tracer, all iso-salinity surfaces rise toward the pumping well, whereas for brine only iso-salinity surfaces of very low salinity upcone towards the pumping well. This may imply that the traditional finding that the sharp interface approximation is practically close to the 0.5 iso-salinity surface may not be true for a high DDF solution.     

A Two-Dimensional Areal Model for Density Dependent Flow Regime

A two-dimensional (2D) plane model of saltwater intrusion was developed, for the simulation of groundwater level and the average solute concentration in a 2D horizontal plane, together with the estimation of the saltwater depth. The proposed approach is of particular interest when assessing the effect of different regional pumping scenarios on groundwater level and its quality. The corresponding MEL2DSLT code was developed on the basis of the Modified Eulerian–Lagrangian (MEL) method to overcome difficulties arising from hyperbolic behavior of flow and transport equations, due to the advective nature of solute transport and heterogeneity of the soil characteristics (permeabilities and dispersivities). The code was verified against the 2D cross sectional model SUTRA and the three-dimensional (3D) model SWICHA. Simulation was conducted concerning the problem of saltwater intrusion in the Khan Yunis portion of the phreatic coastal aquifer of Gaza Strip. After calibrating the model for the aquifer parameters, we investigated its predictions resulting from various regional pumping scenarios using the actual pumping intensity from the year 1985 and extrapolating on the basis of 3.8% annual population growth. Results show a considerable depletion of groundwater level and intrusion of seawater due to excessive pumping.