Concentrates Chemistry news from the week
▸ Highlights 3-D-printed reactors create complex small molecules How some crabs avoid being eaten De novo protein works as enzyme in living bacteria Oil companies invest in solar energy Biotech firm Pandion launches with $58 million Europe plans to end plastic waste disposal U.S. dominance in science and engineering waning EU to lower limit for bisphenol A migration
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ENVIRONMENT
Volatile, ultralight oil payload could dissipate quickly, while ship’s fuel may persist More than 100,000 metric tons of oil carried by an Iranian tanker that sank on Jan. 14 in the East China Sea could endanger nearby fisheries and marine life immediately and for years to come, researchers say. But with many details of the wreck still unknown, it is too early to predict the effects with any certainty. The tanker Sanchi was carrying 136,000 metric tons of ultralight crude oil
ker fuel: a heavy, tarlike, viscous substance that is less toxic than condensate but much more persistent in the environment. Authorities don’t know how much of the ship’s cargo and fuel burned up in the fire or evaporated or how much is now leaking into surrounding waters. China’s State Oceanic Administration, which has been monitoring the spill by ship, plane, and satellite, said satellite im-
Ocean current modeling suggests where oil from the Sanchi might go in the next three months, with the most likely path shown in red. called condensate when it collided with a Chinese cargo ship on Jan. 6. The Sanchi burned until it sank eight days later in 115 meters of water. All 32 crew members of the tanker are presumed dead. Condensate is a volatile type of oil similar to gasoline that is used to make jet fuel and other products. It is highly toxic to marine life. To transport the condensate payload, the Sanchi was likely running on bun-
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JANUARY 22, 2018
ages showed four discrete oil slicks with a total area of 101 km2 near the wreck site on Jan. 17. On Jan. 18, however, the reported spill area had shrunk to 21 km2 in three slicks. China plans to survey the wreck with underwater robots, according to China’s Ministry of Transport. The Sanchi would be more likely to leak heavily if it broke up before sinking or if it landed upright,
says Doug Helton, regional operations supervisor for the Emergency Response Division at the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, which is not involved in the response to this spill. If the ship remained in one piece and capsized “like an upside-down glass,” it might hold some of its contents until they could be recovered. In the short term, condensate dissolved in the water could damage or kill marine organisms, especially those in their early life stages, says Deborah P. French-McCay, an oil spill expert at RPS Group, an environmental and energy consulting firm. According to Greenpeace East Asia, the spill area is a spawning ground for bluefin leatherjacket and swordtip squid and a wintering ground for seafood species including hairtail, yellow croaker, chub mackerel, and blue crab. Marine mammals also use it as a migratory pathway. Ekaterina Popova and her colleagues at the U.K. National Oceanography Centre used a sophisticated ocean model to predict the transport of particles representing oil at the surface from where the ship sank by averaging surface current fields in the region over the past 15 Januaries. They predict that oil on the surface would likely be drawn into the strong Kuroshio current and could reach the coastline of Japan within a month. On that timescale, any condensate at the surface would likely evaporate, disperse, or be degraded, Helton says. However, bunker oil would be more likely to persist and be transported to the coast, which “could be really bad” for fisheries and wildlife, French-McCay says. In contrast to the model results, an official for Japan’s Environment Ministry said on Jan. 16 that the spill is not expected to reach Japan’s shores, the Japan Times reported.—DEIRDRE LOCKWOOD, special
to C&EN
C R E D I T: EKAT E R I N A P O P OVA
Sunken oil tanker threatens marine life
