| The purpose of this research was to develop the experimental methods, as well as examine and quantify adsorption and desorption processes of benzene and toluene in several New Jersey soils. Obtained information could be used to more effectively predict the compound's behavior in the field conditions. Batch experiments were performed in order to examine a three phase system with single and binary contaminants using clean and contaminated material. Five reference and three site soils were chosen based on their chemical properties, with the main focus on their soil organic matter content.;In order to develop the experimental procedure to study sorption processes, three different methods were developed and employed for long term adsorption study. Only the third, anoxic method was able to eliminate the degradation of the compounds of interest during the experiments. The long term adsorption study indicated that the amount of compound(s) sorbed on soil varied for different reference materials. As expected, more of compound(s) was found to be adsorbed to the material with higher organic matter content.;Adsorption equilibrium studies were conducted and Freundlich isotherms for single and binary mixtures were generated. The results indicated that in the reference soil systems, benzene and toluene had a higher affinity for the soil with higher organic matter. In the binary systems, competition reduced the adsorption uptake. For the site soils systems, the presence of previous contamination caused more favorable conditions for adsorption. As a consequence, the dynamics of contaminant sorption in these soils could not be predicted based solely on their soil organic matter content.;Desorption dynamics studies were performed in order to study the removal of sorbed contaminants from soil. The cumulative mass desorbed was modeled as a first-order limited growth curve, and desorption rate constants were generated.;In order to validate methods developed in this study, desorption studies were performed using radiolabeled benzene. By using C... |
