Rhine, river

The waters through which ships travel are categorized by their salt content. The following are approximate values seawater, 3.0 to 4.0% salt coastal brackish water, 1.0 to 3.0% river brackish water, 0.5 to 1.8% salty river water, 0.05 to 0.5% river water, <0.05%. Seawater mainly contains NaCl. The salt content is approximately 1.8 times the chloride ion content. The salt content of the world s oceans is almost the same. Different salt contents can occur in more enclosed seas [e.g., the Adriatic (3.9%), Red Sea (4.1%) and the Baltic (1.0%)]. Table 17-1 gives as an example average analyses for seawater and the Rhine River. 

Table 17-1 Composition and average concentrations of chemicals in seawater and Rhine River water (Duisburg)...

Fig. 15-7 Relationship between dissolved and total heavy metal concentrations in several rivers. Cross-hatched bands represent range of values from the Ruhr (Imhoff et ah, 1980) W and F represent winter and fall values at a selected station in the Mississippi (Eisenreich et ah, 1980) Triangles represent values from the Rhine river (Davis, 1984).

Adsorption is also important in aquatic systems. For example, 82-85% of the endosulfan residues in water samples taken from the Rhine River (0.2-0.6 ppb) were associated with the particulate phase (Greve and Wit 1971). 

Greve PA, Wit SL. 1971. Endosulfan in the Rhine River. J Water Pollut Control Fed 43 2338-2348. 

The anaerobic dechlorination of hexachlorobenzene has been described in anaerobic mixed cultures supplemented with electron donors including lactate, ethanol, or glucose (Holliger et al. 1992) successive and partial dechlorination produced 1,2,4- and 1,3,5-trichlorobenzenes, while the 1,2,3-trichlorobenzene was further dechlorinated. The partial dechlorination of 1,2,3,4-tetra-, 1,2,3,5-tetra-, and pentachlorobenzene has been examined in a methanogenic mixed culture using lactate as electron donor (Middeldorp et al. 1997), and sterile Rhine River sand was needed to maintain dechlorination activity for unresolved reasons. 

Haber found a place to study physical chemistry almost by chance. He had kept constant vigil at the bedside of a dying friend, whose grateful brother suggested that Haber apply to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where an influential relative could help. The school, near the Rhine River in the center of German liberalism, maintained close ties with a large... 

Paul Muller was born on January 12,1899, outside Basel, a wealthy railroad and chemical center on the Rhine River where Germany, France, and Switzerland meet. His father, Gottlieb, the son of an inn and tavern owner, worked for the Swiss Federal Railways. His mother, Fanny Miiller-Leypoldt, was the family disciplinarian and had belonged to a Lutheran order of deaconesses in her native Germany. 

Muller must have been disappointed to learn that he was not the discoverer of DDT. Sixty-five years earlier and seventy miles down the Rhine River, an Austrian graduate student at the University of Strasbourg had synthesized the compound as part of his chemistry doctoral thesis. Although Othmar Zeidler described many of DDT s properties and developed the method used to make it commercially, he overlooked the compound s insecticidal powers. And because DDT was not used to make dyestuffs, it was soon forgotten. Thus, when Geigy took out the basic Swiss patent in March 1940, it was for DDT s use as an insecticide. 

Ironically, despite all this scientific progress, modern fiberoptic cables went into service during a decade of chemical catastrophes more reminiscent of the old Leblanc factories than of optical fibers superpurity. On December 3, 1984, a cloud of deadly methylisocyanate gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India the gas killed more than 3000 people and injured up to 25,000. Two years later in Europe, a Sandoz chemical factory spilled 30 tons of chemicals into the Rhine River, killing fish for 120 miles downstream. In North America, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled crude oil over 1000 miles of Alaskan coastline in 1989. 

Surface water an estimated t,/2 = 1.5 d in Rhine River for a first order reduction process in river water (Zoeteman et al. 1980)... 

One day in the spring of 1937, Dr. ter Meer and Dr. Ambros began the search for another buna site that was to take them, four years later, to Auschwitz. The prosecution contended that the "possible war" turned their feet toward the East. Only one buna plant was in the Rhine Valley, which offered everything they needed water power, calcium deposits, economy of operation. In and beside the Rhine River were water and rail transportation to take the finished rubber to its nearby destinations. 

Rhine River, Germany Brazil, electroplating plant, distance from discharge site (meters) Max. 1240 3... 

Overview of results of determination of AP and APEO in process and drinking water sampled from the Meuse and Rhine rivers, NL... 

The values observed are consistent with the generally low levels of these compounds found in the rivers Rhine and Meuse. A clear distinction between the values found in the river Meuse and the Rhine river basin was not observed. Analysis of samples from the Rhine and Meuse basins in the same period has shown that in general levels were below the LOD, with occasional detectable values in the range of between 1.0 and 3.5 pgL-1 observed [13,14] (see Chapter 6.3). These findings have been confirmed in a recent study by Jonkers et al. [15], in which total dissolved APEO concentrations in the downstream area of the Rhine river of between 0.2 and 0.9 pg L-1, and concentrations of NP averaging 0.1 pg L-1 with little variation, were reported. 

The Rhine River above Lake Constance (alpine and prealpine catchment area) averages the following composition ... 

Zobrist, J., and W. Stumm (1979), "Chemical Dynamics of the Rhine Catchment Area in Switzerland Extrapolation to the "Pristine Rhine River Input into the Ocean", Proc. Review and Workshop on River Inputs to Ocean Systems (RIOS) FAO, Rome. 

The transport of disulfoton from water to air can occur due to volatilization. Compounds with a Henry s law constant (H) of <10 atm-m /mol volatilize slowly from water (Thomas 1990). Therefore, disulfoton, with an H value of 2.17x10" atm-m /mol (Domine et al. 1992), will volatilize slowly from water. The rate of volatilization increases as the water temperature and ambient air flow rate increases and decreases as the rate of adsorption on sediment and suspended solids increases (Dragan and Carpov 1987). The estimated gas- exchange half-life for disulfoton volatilization from the Rhine River at an average depth of 5 meters at 11 °C was 900 days (Wanner et al. ] 989). The estimated volatilization half-life of an aqueous suspension of microcapsules containing disulfoton at 20 °C with still air was >90 days (Dragan and Carpov 1987). 

Following an accidental discharge of stored chemicals including disulfoton, the estimated biodegradation half-life of disulfoton in Rhine River water was between 7 and 41 days at 10 °C (Wanner et al. 1989). Therefore, biodegradation of disulfoton is expected to be important in water, and the rate will depend on the initial concentration. A theoretical model predicted that over 12 days biodegradation and photolysis would account for an 80% mass loss of disulfoton in the Rhine River after an accident spill incident (Mossman et al. 1988) however, the removal of disulfoton by chemical processes was much slower than by biodegradation (Capel et al. 1988). 

The reduction of sulfone to either sulfoxide or sulfide (i.e., disulfoton) was not observed under the same conditions. Since the bacterial populations in sediments and soils are higher than in typical surface waters (Mossman et al. 1988), biodegradation is expected to play a major role in the loss of disulfoton in soil and sediment, as occurred in the disulfoton spill in the Rhine River (Capel et al. 

Capel PD, Eiger W, Reichert P, et al. 1988. Accidental input of pesticides into Rhine River. Environ Sci Technol 22 705-717. 

Wanner U, Egli, T., Fleischmann T, et al. 1989. Behavior of the insecticides disulfoton and thiometon in the Rhine River. A chemodynarnic study. Environmental Science and Technology 23 1232-1242. 

Rhenium - the atomic number is 75 and the chemical symbol is Re. The name derives from the Latin rhenus for the Rhine river in Germany . It was discovered by x-ray spectroscopy in 1925 by the German chemists, Walter Noddack, Ida Tacke and Otto Berg. 

Slowly hydrolyzes in water and in acidic media but is more rapidly hydrolyzed under alkaline conditions to dimethyl hydrogen phosphate and dichloroacetaldehyde (Capel et al., 1988 Hartley and Kidd, 1987 Worthing and Hance, 1991). In the Rhine River (pH 7.4), the hydrolysis half-life of dichlorvos was 6 h (Capel et al, 1988). 

Capel, P.D., Giger, W., Reichert. P.. and Wanner. 0. Accidental input of peshcides into the Rhine River. Environ. Sci. Technol, 22(9) 992-997, 1988. 

ORIGIN OF NAME Derived from the Latin word Rhenus, which stands for the Rhine River... 

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