Abstract
Soil contamination with petroleum-derived compounds is one of the most serious ecological problems. Their main source in urbanized areas is public transport. According to the Regulation of the Polish Minister of Environment about the assessment of earth’s surface contamination, hydrocarbon compounds are divided into: gasolines and oils, aromatic hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The subject of the research is the use of a gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method to assess the degree of soil contamination in the vicinity of the main communication routes of the Kielce agglomeration. This method is useful for the detection and identification of many organic compounds occurring in samples in very small quantities, which cannot be determined by common methods. For the purpose of this study, 14 soil samples were collected. After carrying out extraction with various methods, the ultrasonic solvent extraction method was chosen as the most effective way of extracting hydrocarbon impurities for the GC-MS studies. During single analysis, both oil fraction and PAHs quantities were determined.
Highlights
A municipality can be compared to a living organism, where all elements should function harmoniously
The results of analyses were presented in the form of chromatograms and tables with the content of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and oil fraction (Table. 1, 2, 3 and Fig. 2)
A linear correlation was observed between the sum of PAHs and the concentration of oil fraction in soil (Fig. 5). This shows that the combustion of fuels in vehicle engines is the main source of PAHs
Summary
A municipality can be compared to a living organism, where all elements should function harmoniously. One of the groups of urban metabolites are organic pollutants, especially petroleum-derived compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs, a group of persistent organic pollutants with two or more connected aromatic rings, has more sources in the environment [1,2,3]. PAHs can be generated in natural combustion processes (meadows and forests fires) or may have an anthropogenic origin In the latter case the origin may be petrogenic, i.e. related to oil and its products (e.g. catalytic cracking of oil or abrasion of vehicle tires) and coal (coke production), as well as pyrogenic origin, i.e. connected with all processes of fuel combustion in the production of electricity and heat and in internal combustion engines [1,2,3]. The described method allows quick and effective identification of PAHs, i.e.. naphthalene (NPH), phenantrene (PHE), anthracene (ATH), fluoranthene (FLA), pyrene (PYR), benzo(a)anthracene (BaA), chrysene (CHRY), benzo(b)fluoranthene (BbF), benzo(k)fluoranthene (BkF), benzo(e)pyrene (BeP), dibenzo(a,h)anthracene (DBahA), benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), indeno(1,2,3-c,d)pyrene (IcdP), benzo(ghi)perylene (BghiPE) and evaluation the hydrocarbon content of oil fraction (sum of C12 – C35 hydrocarbons) in soils during single analysis
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