Radiation safety and environmental impact assessment of sludge TENORM waste produced from petroleum industry in Egypt
Introduction
During the extraction process of oil and natural gas production consist of the geologic formations that contain oil and gas deposits as well as contain naturally-occurring radionuclides existing in nature as U-238 series, Th-232 series, and K-40 which are identified as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM). Because the extraction process concentrates the naturally occurring radionuclides also relates them to the surface environment and human connection, these wastes are categorized as Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (TENORM) (Attallah et al., 2013, 2015, 2019a, Abdelbary et al., 2019). Radioactivity concentration levels of TENORM wastes may be different than background soil levels. This variation depends on several factors such as concentration and identification of the radionuclides, condition of the geologic formation, properties of the production process (Attallah et al., 2012; Awwad et al., 2015; Al Abdullah et al., 2017). The petroleum industry generated around 150,000 cubic meters of TENORM waste per year. The petroleum waste (scales or sludge) was produced by two mechanisms either incorporate or participate in the production equipment such as: pipelines, tank storage, pumps, etc. The TENORM waste as scales and sludges, are generated in oil and gas equipment, is due to the precipitation of alkaline earth metals as sulphates, carbonate and/or silicates. (El Afifi, 2001; Attallah et al., 2012). The amount produced depends on several factors, e.g., location of sampling, age of the producing oil and gas, the type of production process, geological formation conditions. The activity concentration of Ra-226 from TENORM waste ranges from 185 to several tens of thousands of Bq/kg of the sample. By comparison, the NORM concentration of radium in rock and soil is 18.5−185 Bq/kg at a natural background level (Zielinski and Otton, 1999; Landsberger et al., 2013).
An accurate determination of the activity concentration, assessment of effective dose, radiological indexes, and waste treatment methods of gamma emitters from TENORM waste samples in environmental and waste samples become critical to prevent eventual radiological impacts to humans. TENORM samples suffer self-absorption (self-attenuation) phenomenon. As a gamma photon passes through the material, it undergoes interactions that result in losing its energy. This loss of energy will result in the diminution of X-rays reaching the detector and reducing the count rate observed under the photo-peak (McMahon et al., 2004; Al Attar et al., 2014; Hilal and Attallah, 2018).
Radon-222 is an inert gas from U-238 daughters, but its danger lies in the process of inhalation or ingestion because of incorporation lead and polonium isotopes into the lung membranes. U-238 daughters are alpha and beta emitters. The radiation of alpha and beta particles dispersion in the air along with short distance, the ingestion of these radionuclides, or inhalation would be very harmful (Attallah et al., 2019b). Due to the high probability of natural radioactivity exist in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. The risk assessment of the TENORM waste associated with this industry has gained attention by researchers from worldwide such as Iran [Taheri et al., 2019], India [Srivastava and Gupta, 2010], China [Chen et al., 2018], Canada [Alnabhani et al., 2016a, b], Syrian [Al-Masri and Aba, 2005], Malaysia [Omar et al., 2004], Ireland [Organo and Fenton, 2008], Egypt [Abdelbary et al., 2019; Attallah et al., 2018; Hilal et al., 2014] and other international organization [USEPA, 2008; UNSCEAR, 2008; IAEA, 2013; APPEA, 2002]. The process safety as well as to protect our environment is essential for any human activities and/or technical industry. Thus, the production of oil and natural gas industry should monitor. Therefore, this research work refers to characterize the sludge TENORM produced from oil and natural gas production and assessment of the environmental radiation hazardous parameters in the eastern desert in Egypt.
Section snippets
Method and sampling details
A sampling of the sludge TENORM waste that had built up in the process of extracting oil, which performed at Gabal EL Zeit eastern desert in Egypt was collected. It was dried for a month in a fume hood using an IR lamp to evaporate all organic volatile materials, and then it was grounded and homogenized and sieved to bulk and three different mesh sizes. In order to determine the activity gamma-ray spectroscopy was used to examine sludge TENORM waste samples. The sample was sieved through 1,
FTIR spectroscopy
Infrared spectra of the sludge TENORM waste samples have been measured as potassium bromide (KBr) disc, represent in Fig. 1. The figure shows that there are mainly vibrational absorption bands, characterized mainly to organic and inorganic compounds. In this concern, the strong absorption band at (3420 cm−1), is characterized by stretching vibrations of the OH group, as a monomer or as hydrogen-bonded. Also, there is a strong absorption band at (2920 cm−1), which is characterized by the CH
Conclusion
The characterization of sludge TENORM waste samples carried out by different spectroscopic investigations associated with oil and production in the Gabal El Zeit field in the eastern desert (e.g. FTIR, EDX, and XRD). The obtained results indicated the composition of the fraction were contained organic compounds due to the presence of some bands in FTIR referred to methyl, CH, OH, and carbonyl groups, and a slightly inorganic compound, such as carbonates and silicate. The activity concentrations
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