English abstract
In an attempt to analyze Omani underground water contaminated with diesel, Gas chromatography-Mass spectrometry was first used for the determination of different analyte concentrations in standard mixtures such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs, 51 components), semivolatile compounds (56 components), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs, 15 components). Retention times and calibration curves were obtained for all components and were used to identify a given analyte as well as its concentration in an unknown sample such as a diesel contaminated water sample. Micellar enhanced ultrafiltration (MEUF) was used to treat aqueous solutions containing specific concentrations of VOCs, semivolatiles and PAHs using Tween 80. For the standard VOCs mixture, most of the analytes were completely removed. Excellent rejections >98.7%) were also observed for the PAHs mixture whereas most of the semivolatile standard components were partially rejected (17%-60%). When applying micellar enhanced ultrafiltration to a diesel contaminated underground water, using two edible surfactants (Tween 80 and Tween 21), the totality of the identified compounds were rejected. Further study was done on the effect of varying the surfactant concentration on the rejection efficiency of both volatile and semivolatile compounds present in the contaminated water. The results confirmed our expectation that higher surfactant concentration leads to higher rejection, owing to the concomitant increase in micellar concentration and solubilizing sites
