Analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in soil via passive sampling : measuring partition and diffusion coefficients

Passive sampling has been used as a qualitative and semi-quantitative method in detecting volatile organic compound (VOCs) concentrations in soil vapors or water. Passive sampling for soil vapor takes an absorptive material and places it underground for a period of time to allow the VOCs to diffuse into the absorptive materials. In this report, I use low density polyethylene (PE) as the absorptive material and determine two key parameters for passive sampling: the PE-water partition coefficient (Kpew) and diffusion coefficient in PE (Dpe). These two parameters help passive sampling to transition from a qualitative method to a quantitative method. The report describes the steps used to carry out the experiments, gives the results for several specific VOCs, and makes an attempt to draw more general conclusions on how to estimate these two parameters according to some other well-known properties.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Hanqing, M. Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Philip M. Gschwend.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99606

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/99606