Microcosm Approach to Study Transport of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Sediment
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 132, Issue 6
Abstract
The transport of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in sediment is difficult to study in the laboratory due to their low solubility and strong tendency to sorb to sediment and experimental equipment. A small-scale laboratory microcosm was designed to study PCB transport in anaerobic surface sediment at microscale and to quantify transport rates. Results of verification testing showed that the experimental system enabled quantitative characterization of the diffusive transport of PCBs in sediment in a reasonable time frame (months). The fine-spatial-resolution results obtained were as expected with the less chlorinated, more mobile congeners transporting the fastest and the more heavily chlorinated compounds transporting more slowly. This laboratory microcosm system could be used to study the transport of many types of pollutants in sediment, but is particularly useful for hydrophobic organic compounds.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, with partial funding from a Teresa Heinz Scholar for Environmental Research fellowship. The writers acknowledge Alcoa Corporation for providing the sediment used in this study. They also thank all of the members of the Packard project team at Carnegie Mellon for their valuable insights and assistance with this work.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 132 • Issue 6 • June 2006
Pages: 689 - 693
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Jun 30, 2005
Accepted: Sep 6, 2005
Published online: Jun 1, 2006
Published in print: Jun 2006
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