ASSAY OF ORGANIC LIQUID CONTENTS IN PREDOMINANTLY WATER-WET UNCONSOLIDATED POROUS-MEDIA

Immiscible organic liquids may be extracted from moist soil or other hydrophilic porous media by shaking a suspension of water and soil in a glass jar with a piece of porous polyethylene. The water displaces the organic liquid from the predominantly hydrophilic sample and the hydrophobic polyethylene preferentially absorbs the organic liquid, excluding water unless there is a detergent associated with the organic. Because most soils have some hydrophobic surfaces, the extraction of organic liquids by displacement with water is not quite complete. A correction is therefore made in the assay method by including samples with known organic liquid content as controls. The amount of organic liquid not displaced from the control samples can also be used to indicate the extent of hydrophobic sites in predominantly water-wet porous media. Organic liquid extractions were made by using three soils and two organic liquids. The standard deviation among replicated extractions was 0.010 g organic liquid. By applying a correction to the mass of organic liquid recovered, the assay accuracy was +/- 0.001 g organic liquid/g soil with 20.0-g oven-dry soil samples. It is likely that this assay method could be scaled up and used as a remediation method for removing and recovering organic liquids from earth excavated from spill or leak sites.