Abstract
Partitioning alcohol tracers were evaluated for characterizing the hydrophobicity of high molecular weight light, nonaqueous phase liquids (LNAPLs). Alcohol partitioning coefficients were found to decrease with increasing n-alkane molecular size. It is hypothesized that this decrease in partitioning coefficient is due to a decreased entropy of mixing. A thermodynamic model and an empirical model were used for fitting alcohol partitioning coefficients for n-alkanes ranging from hexane to hexadecane. The resulting expressions were further evaluated for characterizing equally and more hydrophobic oils of unknown equivalent alkane carbon number (EACN), including squalane (expected EACN of 24-30), and lower EACN oils (3.0-20), including PCE (EACN ∼ 3.0). Good agreement was observed for all the high EACN oils and for PCE. The agreement becomes progressively poorer as the EACN decreases below 3.0, illustrating the danger of extrapolating well beyond the range of data used to develop an empirical relationship. Based on our results we propose that simultaneously using the thermodynamic and empirical models can further characterize a NAPL based on a single partitioning tracer test.
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