Recovery of diesel fuel from soil by supercritical fluid extraction gas chromatography

An analytical method based on CO2 supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) followed by gas chromatography (GC) was evaluated, compared to Soxhlet extraction, and found to determine accurately and precisely diesel fuel contamination of standard soil samples at a total petroleum hydrocarbon level of 100 mu g/g in soil. While both extraction methods have the same 3% relative repeatability standard deviation for determination of total hydrocarbon contamination at this level, SFE requires much less time, uses less organic solvent and provides better recovery of the more volatile n-C-10 to n-C-12 hydrocarbons. Published by Elsevier Science BN.