Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Migration through soil of organic solutes in an oil-shale process water

January 1, 1981

The migration through soil of organic solutes in an oil-shale process water (retort water) was studied by using soil columns and analyzing leachates for various organic constituents. Retort water extracted significant quantities of organic anions leached from ammonium-saturated-soil organic matter, and a distilled-water rinse, which followed retort-water leaching, released additional organic acids from the soil. After being corrected for organic constitutents extracted from soil by retort water, dissolved-organic-carbon fractionation analyses of effluent fractions showed that the order of increasing affinity of six organic compound classes for the soil was as follows: hydrophilic neutrals nearly equal to hydrophilic acids, followed by the sequence of hydrophobic acids, hydrophilic bases, hydrophobic bases, and hydrophobic neutrals. Liquid-chromatographic analysis of the aromatic amines in the hydrophobic- and hydrophilic-base fractions showed that the relative order of the rates of migration through the soil column was the same as the order of migration on a reversed-phase, octadecylsilica liquid-chromatographic column.

Publication Year 1981
Title Migration through soil of organic solutes in an oil-shale process water
DOI 10.1021/es00094a007
Authors J. A. Leenheer, H. A. Stuber
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Environmental Science & Technology
Index ID 70011937
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
Was this page helpful?