Development and Application of Flash Pyrolysis - GC/MS Assay for Documenting Natural and Engineered Attenuation of Nitroaromatic Compounds
Abstract
SERDP SON 01-08 indicated that there exists growing concern about the potential for military training activities leading to groundwater contamination by energetic compounds an improved understanding of groundwater contaminant/treatment is needed . This project directly addressed this need. Regardless of their source (e.g., live fire ranges or manufacture and distribution), nitroaromatics and related explosives pose vexing environmental problems. Inadvertent, realworld field experiments on the environmental fate of nitroaromatic compounds have been in progress at various DoD facilities since WWII. Although groundwater plumes of TNT, RDX, and related compounds have been defined and monitored, the standard analytes required by regulatory authorities do not provide sufficient information to discern the mechanisms that may act to bind and/or attenuate these compounds. Nitroaromatic compounds provide a major challenge to environmental chemists and microbiologists addressing chemical- and bio-treatment based site management plans. The challenge arises because, unlike petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants that can serve as carbon and energy sources for robust microbial reactions, the cometabolic reactions of nitroaromatics leave few obvious geochemical fingerprints in contaminated sites. Without field-based signatures proving that attenuation reactions have actually occur red in the field (for petroleum hydrocarbons, these measures include depletion of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide), the case for nitroaromatics is weak. Even rigorous geochemical modeling (that may suggest quantitative loss of mass of initially-released nitroaromatics) is seldom convincing because the parameters in mass-balance computations are subject to error. Chemical and biological treatment would be a welcome solution to contamination problems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 15, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA604116
Entities
People
- Eugene L. Madsen
Organizations
- Cornell University