Vapor Pressure Characterization to Predict Contaminant Releases from MGP Site Source Area Soils

摘要

Risk-based management of contaminated sites often requires timely screening and identification of source areas that release contaminants to groundwater and other reception of concern. Over-reliance on total concentrations often results in costly site characterization, delays in remediation, and overestimation of the soil volumes targeted for removal or treatment. Advances in diagnostic tools to accelerate source area characterization will improve the reliability of management decisions. The objective of this work was to determine the potential of using vapor pressure measurements as a rapid indicator of the mass release potential of suspected source area soils. The current work has focused on determining the relationship between partial pressure and mobility for monoaromatic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) contaminants in source area soils. This work ascertained that for a wide spectrum of non-ionized, aromatic contaminants in MGP soils, total vapor pressure and benzene partial pressure could be measured with good repeatability. Under controlled conditions, photoionization detector (PID) measurements on 16 soil samples from two MGP sites were found to correlate well to laboratory measurements of equilibrium partitioning and resin-mediated soil contaminant desorption with R super(2) values of over 0.9. Results indicate that vapor pressure correlates well to contaminant mobility in soils.