Hot methanol extraction for the analysis of volatile organic chemicals in subsurface core samples from Dover Air Force Base, Delaware

The evaluation of contaminant concentrations in ground water and soil is an essential aspect of most hazardous waste remedial investigations. This paper describes methods applied toward obtaining, preserving, and analyzing subsurface samples for the determination of VOC concentrations in the saturated region of an unconfined coastal plain aquifer at Dover Air Force Base (DAFB), Delaware. The described protocol involved headspace-free subsampling of cores, field preservation of subsamples in methanol, and overnight extraction of the VOCs at elevated temperature (70 degrees C). Methanol-extracted compounds were subsequently transferred to hexane and analyzed by gas chromatography. The method was found to achieve quantitative extraction from the aquifer sands in a single step, although extraction from fine-grained and more strongly sorbing aquitard samples required multiple methanol extractions to achieve comparable recovery. An extensive set of DAFB results is presented as an indication of how these methods can be applied toward characterizing field-scale contamination with a high degree of resolution and accuracy. These data have enabled a quantitative estimate of the contaminant distribution at this site and offer valuable insight into processes of contaminant migration into the underlying aquitard. In these regards, the methods used are believed to have provided much more accurate results than could have been obtained using more commonly applied techniques.