Bingjie Shi, Stephane Ngueleu, Fereidoun Rezanezhad, Stephanie Slowinski, Geertje Johanna Pronk, Christina Smeaton, and Philippe Van Cappellen of the Ecohydrology Research Group co-authored a paper titled “Sorption and Desorption of the Model Aromatic Hydrocarbons Naphthalene and Benzene: Effects of Temperature and Soil Composition”, which was recently published in Frontiers in Environmental Chemistry.
This study assesses the temperature sensitivity and reversibility of naphthalene sorption and desorption by imposing a dynamic temperature regime to an artificial soil-naphthalene suspension. The results showed that sorption under dynamic temperature may lead to alternating phases of petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC) release inspiring importance of temperature on the PHC biotic degradation and provided essential knowledge to separate the contributions of biotic degradation and abiotic sorption/desorption on the fate of PHCs in soil environments. The temperature-controlled sorption of PHCs is important for cold regions, where soil temperature is more sensitive to the global climate change relative to other areas. The study included collaborators from Imperial Oil Ltd, Sarnia Technology Applications & Research, and Qatar University.
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