2. Development of New Environment-friendly Oil Spill Dispersant
Since 1960s, the international community started the research and development of chemical oil spill dispersant.In 1967, a great volume of oil spill dispersant was used to handle the spilled oil from the Torrey Canyon oil spill accident; due to its high toxicity, the oil spill dispersant severely damaged the marine ecological environment.Hence, many scholars began to focus on the researches of low-toxic oil spill dispersant. Generally speaking, the oil spill dispersant products have undergone three development stages by types of surfactant and solvent (Su, 1992):For the first generation of products, the major component is anionic surfactant and the major solvent light aromatic hydrocarbon; for the second generation, the major component is nonionic surfactant with lower toxicity (mainly ether surfactant); for the third generation of concentrated products, its D-sorbite, fatty acid, and other raw materials come from agricultural and sideline products, and the solvent is polyethyleneglycol so that the oil spill dispersant
products are much less toxic.