NOVEL USE OF A FIBER-OPTIC-BASED ONLINE TRICHLOROETHYLENE SENSOR IN ACOLUMN RETARDATION EXPERIMENT

A newly developed fiber-optic-based trichloroethylene (TCE) sensor pre viously described [F.P. Milanovich, S.B. Brown, B.W. Colston, Jr., P.F . Daley and K. Langry, Talanta, 41 (1994) 2189], was used to provide a nalyses of TCE in laboratory tests of retardation of TCE in ground wat er. The sensor enabled inexpensive real time analyses of TCE in retard ation tests conducted in a sand-filled flow-through column. The simult aneous data analysis of TCE, O-18 and Cl- breakthrough curves enabled the calculation of an estimated retardation coefficient which was foun d to be in good agreement with that predicted by the octanol/water par titioning K-d method. The fiber-optic sensor was demonstrated to be a fast and reliable method for conducting on-line laboratory analyses of TCE at the parts per billion level in a small volume of contaminated water, thus providing excellent temporal resolution of the data as wel l as minimizing volatile losses during sample collection and analysis.