Mao YEXing-Lun YANGMing-Ming SUNYong-Rong BIANFang WANGCheng-Gang GUHai-Jiang WEIYang SONGLei WANGXin JINXin JIANG. Use of Organic Solvents to Extract Organochlorine Pesticides (OCPs) from Aged Contaminated Soils.Pedosphere201323(1): 10–19.

Abstract

Problems associated with organochlorine pesticide (OCP)-contaminated sites in China have received wide attention. To solve such problems innovative ex-situ methods of site remediation are urgently needed. We investigated the feasibility of the extraction method with different organic solvents ethanol 1-propanol and three fractions of petroleum ether using a soil collected from Wujiang (WJ) China a region with long-term contamination of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes (DDTs). We evaluated different influential factors including organic solvent concentration washing time mixing speed solution-to-soil ratio and washing temperature on the removal of DDTs from the WJ soil. A set of relatively better parameters were selected for extraction with 100 mL L⁻¹ petroleum ether (60–90 °C): washing time of 180 min mixing speed of 100 r min⁻¹ solution-to-soil ratio of 10:1 and washing temperature of 50 °C. These selected parameters were also applied on three other seriously OCP-polluted soils. Results demonstrated their broad-spectrum effectiveness and excellent OCP extraction performance on the contaminated soils with different characteristics.