STATISTICS OF LOST HISTORICAL COAL TAR PAH CONTAMINATION IN SOILS AND SEDIMENTS

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) data in the investigation of coal gasification contaminants. In the United States legal system considerable demands are placed upon forensic geochemistry to unlock tangled sources of PAH at former coal gasification and coal tar processing sites. Time is not on the side of the forensic investigator. Things change. While there is a defined and well documented industrial time line, decades long, in Europe and in the United States, care must be exercised to not neglect the historical engineering record. Coal gasification operational impacts in the modern era arise from engineering process decisions that were made in the 1800s. Important engineering decisions were made to facilitate production of hydrocarbon gases for illumination and chemical manufacturing in the manufactured gas production (MGP) industry. Commensurate with coal gasification was coal tar management. In the United States, MGP development accelerated as the technology arrived from Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century. Changes in gasification technology over time carried operational manifestations that also carried long-term consequences that were not recognized nor appreciated at the time. Changes in gasification technology from batch operations to technologies such as horizontal coal gas retorts, carbureted water gas, inclined gas retorts, coke oven installations and oil gas each carried attendant hidden contaminant consequences that were, perhaps at the time, viewed as unimportant.