New Approaches to Identification of Sources of Phenols in Surface Water Bodies

摘要

Russia possesses a great hydroelectric potential and simultaneously the world largest forest reserves. During the construction of large hydroelectric power stations in the forest-covered areas, forest clearance often proved to be economically impractical and large amounts of wood were flooded [1]. There are about 200 such hydroelectric power stations in Russia and in other former-USSR countries, the largest of them being located in the Angara—Yenisei region [2]. Compounds present in wood and the products of fungal and bacterial degradation of wood [3—6], which are often toxic, are extracted from the flooded wood into the river water. Among the latter compounds, phenols are especially hazardous; according to many-year observations of the Agency on Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring stations, phenols are among the major pollutants present in the Yenisei River [7, 8]. The possible sources of phenols in the wood pulp are phenol compounds present both in free and bound states and lignin, an irregular polymer with branched macromolecules composed mainly of the residues of substituted phenoloalcohols [9].