Modeling Water Column Partitioning of Polychlorinated Biphenyls to Natural Organic Matter and Black Carbon

High volume in situ surface water samples were collected from a tidal tributary of the Delaware Estuary using an Infiltrex sampling system equipped with a 1 μm particle filter and a XAD-2 resin column. Particulate and dissolved phase polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners were analyzed using high...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & technology 2013-06, Vol.47 (12), p.6408-6414
Main Authors: Greene, Richard W., Di Toro, Dominic M., Farley, Kevin J., Phillips, Kathy L., Tomey, Cynthia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Brackish
Carbon
Carbon - chemistry
Carbon black
Chromatography
Continental surface waters
Earth sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Engineering and environment geology. Geothermics
Exact sciences and technology
Mass spectrometry
Models, Theoretical
Natural water pollution
Organic Chemicals - chemistry
Parameter optimization
PCB
Pollution
Pollution, environment geology
Polychlorinated biphenyls
Polychlorinated Biphenyls - chemistry
Water Pollutants, Chemical - chemistry
Water treatment and pollution
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:High volume in situ surface water samples were collected from a tidal tributary of the Delaware Estuary using an Infiltrex sampling system equipped with a 1 μm particle filter and a XAD-2 resin column. Particulate and dissolved phase polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners were analyzed using high resolution gas chromatography/high resolution mass spectrometry to obtain detection levels in the femtograms per liter range. The data were fit to a four-phase equilibrium partitioning model including freely dissolved PCB, PCB bound to particulate organic carbon (POC), PCB bound to dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and PCB bound to black carbon (BC). Isotherms were assumed to be linear for POC and DOC and nonlinear for BC. The partition coefficient between BC and dissolved PCB was assumed to depend on the dihedral angle between the phenyl rings. Following parameter optimization, the correlation coefficient between the log of the modeled and measured apparent distribution coefficient K p,app was 0.94, and the RMSE was 0.189 log units. Including BC in the model reduces the dissolved PCB phase concentration in the water column for all congeners, especially for the non-ortho and mono-ortho substituted congeners.
ISSN:0013-936X
1520-5851
DOI:10.1021/es400817c