ENVR 102 |
| Polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) - ubiquitous environmental pollutants resulting from incomplete combustion - are often situated in the environment as multi-component solid phase mixtures. Some of these mixtures are easily characterized; many lack complete thermodynamic quantification due to their seemingly infinite number of constituents. What few data on mixtures are available in the literature show a vast range of experimental correlations. By fully characterizing the vapor pressure of a contaminated soil we are better equipped to predict the environmental distribution, fate and transport of these carcinogenic mixtures. The use of the novel nonisothermal Knudsen effusion technique enables the collection of real-time vapor phase composition, offering the potential to describe mixture behavior using activity coefficients, not only the ideal Raoult's law case. This paper presents data gathered on mixtures of PACs and an analysis of the ideality of mixture behavior through Raoult's law, an approximation often employed in risk assessment. |
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Environmental Contaminants: Low-Level and Complex Mixtures
1:30 PM-4:50 PM, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Boston Park Plaza -- Stanbro Rm, Oral
Division of Environmental Chemistry |