Gas Chromatographic Estimation of Vapor Pressures and Octanol–Air Partition Coefficients of Semivolatile Organic Compounds of Emerging Concern

Abstract

The subcooled liquid-phase vapor pressures (pL298/Pa) and octanol–air partition coefficients (KOA298) at T/K = 298, enthalpies of vaporization (ΔVAPH/kJ·mol–1), and internal energies of phase transfer from octanol to air (ΔOAU/kJ·mol–1) were estimated for synthetic musks, novel brominated flame retardants (N-BFR), organophosphate esters, and ultraviolet filters using the capillary gas chromatographic retention time (GC-RT) method. These compounds, which spanned approximately six and three orders of magnitude for pL298/Pa and KOA298, respectively, were co-chromatographed with one of three reference compounds to give initial estimates of properties at T/K = 298. The initial GC-RT property estimates were subsequently calibrated using 18 compounds that spanned 6 log units for pL298/Pa and 13 compounds covering 4 log units for KOA298. The calibrated log10 pL298/Pa values estimated here ranged from 0.14 ± 0.19 to −9.19 ± 0.29 for cyclopentadecanone to syn-dechlorane plus (syn-DDC-CO), respectively, while the range of log10 KOA298 values was 6.59 ± 0.26 to 11.40 ± 0.23 for cyclopentadecanone to 2,2′,4,4′,5-pentabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-99), respectively. The calibrated GC-RT-derived values were highly correlated with, and were within an average of 0.70 log units of, the literature data for compounds with well-established pL298/Pa and KOA298 measured or derived using non-GC-RT methods. Nonpolar compounds were used in this study to estimate the target polar compound data, which may introduce systematic errors. However, the comparison of our GC-RT results against the literature non-GC-RT values shows that the GC-RT methods performed similarly well for estimating both polar and nonpolar target compounds studied in this work.