Solid hydrocarbon soil

Solid hydrocarbon soils can be rapidly removed from the surface of a ZnSe IRE by alkyl polyethylene oxide) surfactants. The removal mechanism involves penetration of a small amount of the surfactant into the hydrocarbon layer, which causes an increase in methylene chain defects in the soil, and displacement of solid soil from the substrate. Solubilization of a large fraction of the solid soil is not required. 

Sediment-solid and soil-solid samples can be treated in different ways prior to extraction depending on the purpose of the research program. Sediments or soils are stored more conveniently as dried powders. However, this technique is not appropriate if relatively volatile pollutants such as l-ring aryl hydrocarbons (e. g., alkylbenzenes, chlorohydrocarbons, chlorobenzenes), PAH (e.g., naphthalene) are to be determined. In such cases, the sediment or soil should remain frozen prior to analysis and extracted wet. 

Time - resolved spectra of a solid hydrocarbon layer on the surface of an internal reflection element, interacting with an aqueous solution of a nonionic surfactant, can be used to monitor the detergency process. Changes in the intensity and frequency of the CH2 stretching bands, and the appearance of defect bands due to gauche conformers indicate penetration of surfactant into the hydrocaibon layer. Perturbation of the hydrocarbon crystal structure, followed by displacement of solid hydrocaibon from the IRE surface, are important aspects of solid soil removal. Surfactant bath temperature influences detergency through its effects on both the phase behavior of the surfactant solution and its penetration rate into the hydrocaibon layer. 

Solid soils are commonly encountered in hard surface cleaning and continue to become more important in home laundry conditions as wash temperatures decrease. The detergency process is complicated in the case of solid oily soils by the nature of the interfacial interactions of the surfactant solution and the solid soil. An initial soil softening or "liquefaction", due to penetration of surfactant and water molecules was proposed, based on gravimetric data (4). In our initial reports of the application of FT-IR to the study of solid soil detergency, we also found evidence of rapid surfactant penetration, which was correlated with successful detergency (5). In this chapter, we examine the detergency performance of several nonionic surfactants as a function of temperature and type of hydrocarbon "model soil". Performance characteristics are related to the interfacial phase behavior of the ternary surfactant -hydrocarbon - water system. 

Eriksson M, Faldt J, Dalhammar G, Borg-Karlson A-K. Determination of hydrocarbons in old creosote contaminated soil using headspace solid phase microextraction and GC-MS. Chemosphere 2001 44 71641-71648. 

Accelerated solvent extraction is a new technique for the extraction of a range of organic pollutants from soils and related material. The technique is based on the use of a solvent or combination of solvents to extract organic pollutants at elevated pressure and temperature from a solid matrix. The range of organic pollutants for which the technique is proposed includes semivolatile compounds, organochlorine pesticides, organophosphorus pesticides, chlorinated herbicides, polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [53-56],... 

Lopez-Avila et al. [59] used microwave assisted extraction to assist the extraction of polyaromatic hydrocarbons from soils. Another extraction method was described by Hartmann [60] for the recovery of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in forest soils. The method included saponification of samples in an ultrasonic bath, partitioning of polyaromatic hydrocarbons into hexane, extract cleanup by using solid-phase extraction, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometric analysis using deuterated internal standards. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons were thermally desorbed from soils and sediments without pretreatment in another investigation [61]. 

There are a wide range of bioremediation technologies either in use or proposed for use on oil/gasoline-contaminated land [301, 319], and these can be divided into two broad groups. In situ techniques treat the contamination at the site of the pollution event, whereas ex situ techniques remove the contamination from the ground and transfer it to another location for treatment. The use of in situ treatment is often preferable in terms of financial considerations, due to the cost of moving large quantities of soil [20]. Some novel approaches to the problem of hydrocarbon contamination of contaminated aqueous-solid phase environments is the use of (1) gas-liquid foams to enhance in situ bioremediation, and (2) biostimulation, as follows. 

Burks, G.A. and Harmon, T.C. Volatilization of solid-phase polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from model mixtures and lampblack-contaminated soils. J. Chem. Eng. Data, 46(4) 944-949, 2001. 

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