Measurement of Henry's law constant for methyl tert-butyl ether using solid-phase microextraction

Increasing groundwater contamination with methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) requires more efficient remediation technologies. Accurate measurement of MTBE's air-water partitioning coefficient (Henry's law constant, H) is important for the design and optimization of removal efficiency for many treatment systems as well as for predicting its fate and transport. Previously published data for MTBE appear to have some unusual nonlinearity at lower temperatures (15-30 degrees C), and a wide range of values exists for dimensionless H at 25 degrees C, from 0.0216 to 0.1226 in the published literature. We measured H for MTBE using headspace solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and a static method that considers equilibrium partitioning in a closed system, for temperatures between 15 and 4 degrees C. To validate our methods, we measured H for benzene, toluene, and trichloroethylene and compared our results to previously published values, with excellent agreement. The Arrhenius plot for MTBE indicates that ln(HMBTE) = 6.85 - 2,900 T(-1), with T in K. At 25 degrees C, HMBTE = 0.0555 +/- 0.0122.