[Desorption of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in soils assisted by SPMD]

In order to develop a new method to study the desorption and bioavailability of hydrophobic organic chemicals (HOCs) in soils, a method using semi-permeable membrane device (SPMD) to study desorption of HOCs in soils has been set up, and assisted desorption of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phenanthrene(PHE), pyrene(PYE), and benzo[a] pyrene (B[a]PYE) in three different kinds of soils was studied using SPMD. The results show that SPMD is a good measurement to study the desorption and bioavailability of HOCs in soils. SPMD assisted desorption of PAHs is highly dependent on the properties of the soils and the chemicals. PHE and PYE desorption percentages increase with the reduction of the content of soil organic matter (SOM), so that the desorption of the two chemicals increases from 56.45% and 48.28% to almost 100% when SOM content was reduced from 18.68% to 0.3%. However, clay has a significant holding effect on B[a]PYE, and PYE desorption is only 66.97% in Soil 3 with SOM of 0.3% and clay content of 39.05%. There is a great variety in the desorption among the different PAHs. With the reduction of SOM content and the elevation of contamination concentration, the difference between PHE and PYE decreases gradually, while B[a]PYE exhibits a significant difference from them. This could be attributed to the high lipophilicity and large molecular size of B[a]PYE, which make the molecule of B[a]PYE to be more easier to be held in the nanopores of clay and the dense region of SOM.