Modeling water column partitioning of polychlorinated biphenyls to natural organic matter and black carbon

High volume in situ surface water samples were collected from a tidal tributary of the Delaware Estuary using an Infiltrex sampling system equipped with a 1 μm particle filter and a XAD-2 resin column. Particulate and dissolved phase polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners were analyzed using high resolution gas chromatography/high resolution mass spectrometry to obtain detection levels in the femtograms per liter range. The data were fit to a four-phase equilibrium partitioning model including freely dissolved PCB, PCB bound to particulate organic carbon (POC), PCB bound to dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and PCB bound to black carbon (BC). Isotherms were assumed to be linear for POC and DOC and nonlinear for BC. The partition coefficient between BC and dissolved PCB was assumed to depend on the dihedral angle between the phenyl rings. Following parameter optimization, the correlation coefficient between the log of the modeled and measured apparent distribution coefficient Kp,app was 0.94, and the RMSE was 0.189 log units. Including BC in the model reduces the dissolved PCB phase concentration in the water column for all congeners, especially for the non-ortho and mono-ortho substituted congeners.