DETERMINATION OF INFINITE DILUTION ACTIVITY-COEFFICIENTS AND 1-OCTANOL WATER PARTITION-COEFFICIENTS OF VOLATILE ORGANIC POLLUTANTS

The characterization of pollutants is of growing interest as concerns about the environment increase. One parameter useful in predicting the fate of a chemical in the environment, the infinite dilution activity coefficient, has been determined here for several EPA priority pollutants in 1-octanol at 25-degrees-C using a relative gas-liquid chromatographic measurement technique. A simple correlation has been developed relating the limiting activity coefficients of a species in pure water and in pure 1-octanol to its octanol/water partition coefficient. Agreement between the experimental results and published values is very good. The method developed here of computing the octanol/water partition coefficient from gas chromatographic measurements of its infinite dilution activity coefficients is an improvement over traditional partition coefficient determination methods in that it is easier and quicker, without a loss of accuracy. Furthermore, we show that this method is applicable to chemicals covering a large range of hydrophobicities (1.0 < log K(ow) < 5.0).