Mass balances organic pollutants concentrated

Empirical [65-79] Equilibration technique The most direct approach is to equilibrate the organic pollutant in the octanol/water system and measure its concentration in both phases Concentrations derived from mass balance calculation, though less time-consuming, can introduce considerably more uncertainty... 

Masclet and co-workers (1986) have also developed a relative PAH decay index. They used it, for example, to identify various major sources of urban pollution and developed a model for PAH concentrations at receptor sites. An interesting and relevant area that is beyond the scope of this chapter is the use of PAHs as organic tracers and incorporating their relative decay rates (reactivities) into such receptor-source, chemical mass balance models. Use of relative rates can significantly improve such model performances (e.g., see Daisey et al., 1986 Masclet et al., 1986 Pistikopoulos et al., 1990a, 1990b Lee et al., 1993 Li and Kamens,... 

Chemicals in water can sorb to sediment or soil in a reversible process that reflects the attraction and adhesion of molecules to solids. (Less commonly considered in environmental mass balances, some air pollutants can sorb to particulates in the atmosphere.) The n-octanol/water partition coefficient (K ) of a substance provides a crude indication of the tendency to partition to solids from water a high value indicates that a substance is hydro-phobic/lipophilic and would tend to sorb to solids. More sophisticated tests determine a distribution coefficient (KJ or adsorption isotherm to relate the concentration in solution to the concentration sorbed to solids. The sorption coefficient is the ratio between the concentration of a chemical in soil to the concentration in water which is in contact with the soil. Normalized to the organic carbon content of the soil, this coefficient becomes (K = I i/ fraction organic carbon in soil) [4]. 

---