Plant-based herding agent promising for oil spills response in cold regions and its effect on oil/water mixtures freezing and thawing as revealed by MRI.

This work reports on the first multi-scale NMR study of new plant-based herding agent suitable for application in Arctic marine environment. Using NMR spectroscopy the chemical components of the herding agent were established while through the NMR relaxometry and diffusometry the local dynamics, molecular mobility, and transport properties of the components were studied depending on water content upon dilution. MRI method was first applied to probe the effect of herder on freezing and thawing processes occurring in dodecane/water and light oil/water mixtures.