Investigations on methods for site specific determination of the partition coefficient - Kd, for contaminants in soilThesis work with additional comments

The aim of this work was to find a method for a site specific determination of the partition coefficient Kd, which describes whether a substance is situated in the soil particles or in the soil water. This coefficient is used to calculate guideline values for contaminants in soil. Currently, a theoretical coefficient and some basic assumptions regarding soil qualities are used in the calculations. The difficulty in determining a representative Kd-value is to measure contaminant concentrations in the soil water. A review is presented here where the advantages and disadvantages of existing methods is concluded from a perspective where the quality of the soil water extract is the most important parameter, followed by the parameters time and cost. Finally, centrifugal extraction was determined to be one appropriate method. Laboratory research aimed to solve these issues by wetting soil samples from the bottom in their centrifuge cylinders, which would keep sample yield at a maximum and assure that all cylinders were fully saturated. Investigations were performed on a sandy moraine contaminated with chrome, copper and arsenic.