Developments toward a low-cost approach for long-term, unattended vapor intrusion monitoring

There are over 450 000 sites contaminated by chemicals in the US. This large number of contaminated sites and the speed of subsurface migration of chemicals pose considerable risk to nearby residences and commercial buildings. The high costs for monitoring around these sites stem from the labor involved in placing and replacing the passive sorbent vapor samplers and the resultant laboratory analysis. This monitoring produces sparse data sets that do not track temporal changes well. To substantially reduce costs and better track exposures, less costly, unattended systems for monitoring soil gases and vapor intrusion into homes and businesses are desirable to aid in the remediation of contaminated sites. This paper describes progress toward the development of an inexpensive system specifically for monitoring vapor intrusion; the system can operate repeatedly without user intervention with low detection limits (1 × 10(-9), or 1 part-per-billion). Targeted analytes include chlorinated hydrocarbons (dichloroethylene, trichloroethane, trichloroethylene, and perchloroethylene) and benzene. The system consists of a trap-and-purge preconcentrator for vapor collection in conjunction with a compact gas chromatography instrument to separate individual compounds. Chemical detection is accomplished with an array of chemicapacitors and a metal-oxide semiconductor combustibles sensor. Both the preconcentrator and the chromatography column are resistively heated. All components are compatible with ambient air, which serves as the carrier gas for the gas chromatography and detectors.