Abstract
A possibility of a portable field kit for studying traffic originated pollutants based on laser induced fluorescence (LIF) or multi-photon ionization fast-conductivity (MPI-FC) has been addressed. The resulting instrumentation has been successfully tested on soil samples that were collected and classified according to their radial distance, R, from a busy highway. The sampling was done in the near-field range with A varying from 3 to 50 m. Organic material from the samples was transferred into hexane solutions by short-time shaking with pure hexane. These solutions were investigated by simple LIF and MPI-FC instruments, which can be engineered as portable units (e.g., a PC plugged-in spectrometer has been used, in which case both the signal excitation and detection were accessed by means of optical fibers). Detected traces showed a nearly 1/R fall-off of the LIF and MPI-FC experimental data as a function of the sample distance from the road. It is estimated that at 50 m from the road the contamination concentrations (about 90% aliphatics and 10% aromatics) are as high as 0.1 μg g-1. Both proposed methods provide good sensitivity at the relevant concentration range and may be applied for fast screening of traffic contamination of soils.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 93-99 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Analytica Chimica Acta |
Volume | 343 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 12 May 1997 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Fluorimetry
- Highway originated pollutants
- Laser methods
- Pollutants