MULTIVARIATE-ANALYSIS OF MID-IR FT-IR SPECTRA OF HYDROCARBON-CONTAMINATED WET SOILS

This article describes a series of mid-IR FT-IR reflectance spectrosco py measurements of hydrocarbon-contaminated wet soils, The eventual go al of this work is the development of an analysis tool suitable for re al-time in situ underground measurements where a suitable reference sp ectrum is not available, Multivariate analysis of the resulting spectr al data indicates that the strongly varying wet soil matrix and the ab sence of a suitable reference spectrum in the field do not render this measurement technique unfeasible as a means of realizing remote in si tu chemical detection in wet soils, It was also observed that simultan eous quantification of moisture content and identification of soil com position may be achieved, These results have important applications to in situ site characterization for environmental cleanup and soil char acterization for construction planning.