Accelerated solvent extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from contaminated soil

Abstract

Accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) has been compared with Soxhlet, microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) for the extraction of sixteen priority PAHs in a natively contaminated soil. The results indicate that ASE could quantitatively isolate all the PAHs investigated in approximately 12 min using a 1 + 1 mixture of acetone and dichloromethane at a temperature of 100 °C and pressure of 14 MPa. The total amount of PAHs recovered was in agreement with the results obtained using optimized conditions of MAE and SFE. Repeat extractions on the contaminated soil indicated that ASE had exhaustively extracted all available PAHs using a 5 min static extraction.