New Approach for Estimating Alcohol Partition Coefficients between Nonaqueous Phase Liquids and Water

The partitioning interwell tracer test (PITT) has emerged during the past few years as a useful tool for characterizing aquifers contaminated by nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) and in particular the location and volume of NAPLs. Accurate partition coefficients are needed for a wide variety of tracers and NAPLs to use this technology to its maximum benefit. A new approach to estimate the partition coefficients of alcohol tracers partitioning between NAPL and water is presented. This approach is based upon defining an equivalent alkane carbon number for each contaminant and for each alcohol tracer and is very useful for both minimizing the number of experiments required and for extracting the maximum information from such experiments.