Soil Chemical Properties and PAHs Analysis

Selected chemical properties of soil (pH, Hh, total N, Corg) were analyzed. The following parameters were determined in air-dried soil samples: pH 1 mol KCl∙dm⁻³, by the potentiometric method; hydrolytic acidity (Hh), by Kappen’s method; total nitrogen content, by distillation after mineralization in sulfuric (VI) acid with the addition of the selenium reagent mixture; organic carbon content, by the Kurmies method.
The content of 16 PAHs was determined with the Trace GC/MS Ultra ITQ900 system with a TRIPlus autosampler (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA) and a flame ionization detector. The total content of 16 PAHs (naphthalene, acenaphthene, acenaphthylene, fluorene, phenanthrene, anthracene, fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo(a)anthracene, chrysene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, benzo(a)pyrene, indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene, dibenzo(a,h)anthracene and benzo(g,h,i)perylene) was determined by the method described by Krzebietke et al. [3 (link)]. The content of LMW PAHs (naphthalene, acenaphthene, acenaphthylene, fluorene, anthracene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene, pyrene and chrysene) and HMW PAHs (benzo(a)anthracene, benzo(a)pyrene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, benzo(g,h,i)perylene, indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene and dibenzo(a,h)anthracene) was determined in soil samples.