Application of liquid chromatography to pollution abatement studies of munition wastes

NMR spectroscopy of wastewater: A review, case study, and future potential

NMR spectroscopy is arguably the most powerful tool for the study of molecular structures and interactions, and is increasingly being applied to environmental research, such as the study of wastewater. With over 97% of the planet's water being saltwater, and two thirds of freshwater being frozen in the ice caps and glaciers, there is a significant need to maintain and reuse the remaining 1%, which is a precious resource, critical to the sustainability of most life on Earth. Sanitation and reutilization of wastewater is an important method of water conservation, especially in arid regions, making the understanding of wastewater itself, and of its treatment processes, a highly relevant area of environmental research. Here, the benefits, challenges and subtleties of using NMR spectroscopy for the analysis of wastewater are considered. First, the techniques available to overcome the specific challenges arising from the nature of wastewater (which is a complex and dilute matrix), including an examination of sample preparation and NMR techniques (such as solvent suppression), in both the solid and solution states, are discussed. Then, the arsenal of available NMR techniques for both structure elucidation (e.g., heteronuclear, multidimensional NMR, homonuclear scalar coupling-based experiments) and the study of intermolecular interactions (e.g., diffusion, nuclear Overhauser and saturation transfer-based techniques) in wastewater are examined. Examples of wastewater NMR studies from the literature are reviewed and potential areas for future research are identified. Organized by nucleus, this review includes the common heteronuclei (¹³C, ¹⁵N, ¹⁹F, ³¹P, ²⁹Si) as well as other environmentally relevant nuclei and metals such as ²⁷Al, ⁵¹V, ²⁰⁷Pb and ¹¹³Cd, among others. Further, the potential of additional NMR methods such as comprehensive multiphase NMR, NMR microscopy and hyphenated techniques (for example, LC-SPE-NMR-MS) for advancing the current understanding of wastewater are discussed. In addition, a case study that combines natural abundance (i.e. non-concentrated), targeted and non-targeted NMR to characterize wastewater, along with in vivo based NMR to understand its toxicity, is included. The study demonstrates that, when applied comprehensively, NMR can provide unique insights into not just the structure, but also potential impacts, of wastewater and wastewater treatment processes. Finally, low-field NMR, which holds considerable future potential for on-site wastewater monitoring, is briefly discussed. In summary, NMR spectroscopy is one of the most versatile tools in modern science, with abilities to study all phases (gases, liquids, gels and solids), chemical structures, interactions, interfaces, toxicity and much more. The authors hope this review will inspire more scientists to embrace NMR, given its huge potential for both wastewater analysis in particular and environmental research in general.

Treatment of TNT red water by layer melt crystallization

Treatment of the red water, which is wastewater of 2,4,6- trinitrotoluene (TNT) manufacturing process has been explored using ice crystallization. This study focuses on the formation of ice crystals from the red water in a layer crystallizer under various operating conditions. Among the parameters which affect layer crystallization, attention was given to cooling rate, cooling temperature, sweating rate and concentration of the red water. The study highlights the effect of subcooling and growth rate on purity of the ice crystalline layers produced. After sweating, the COD value of crystalline ice layer was significantly reduced from 10,000 mg/L to below 20mg/L. Most organic contaminants were removed in sweating fractions of 0.5. Eventually, the red water was treated by layer crystallization combined with the sweating process.

Organic pollutants removal from 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) red water using low cost activated coke

We treated 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) red water from the Chinese explosive industry with activated coke (AC) from lignite. Since the composition of TNT red water was very complicated, chemical oxygen demand (COD) was used as the index for evaluating treatment efficiency. This study focused on sorption kinetics and equilibrium sorption isotherms of AC for the removal of COD from TNT red water, and the changes of water quality before and after adsorption were evaluated using high performance liquid chromatography, UV-Vis spectra and gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy. The results showed that the sorption kinetics of COD removal from TNT red water onto AC fitted well with the pseudo second-order model. The adsorption process was an exothermic and physical process. The sorption isotherm was in good agreement with Redlich-Peterson isotherm. At the conditions of initial pH = 6.28, 20 degrees C and 3 hr of agitation, under 160 g/L AC, 64.8% of COD was removed. The removal efficiencies of 2,4-dinitrotoluene-3-sulfonate (2,4-DNT-3-SO3-) and 2,4-dinitrotoluene-5-sulfonate (2,4-DNT-5-SO3-) were 80.5% and 84.3%, respectively. After adsorption, the acute toxicity of TNT red water reduced greatly, compared with that of unprocessed TNT red water.

Stability of nitroaromatic specialty explosives in reversed-phase liquid chromatographic systems

In this study, the stability of 2,4-dinitroanisole, 2,2',4,4',6,6'-hexanitrodiphenylsulfide, 2,3,4,6-tetranitroaniline, 2,4,6-trinitroaniline, 2,4,6-trinitroanisole, and 2,4,6-trinitrochlorobenzene in liquid chromatographic systems was studied under different solvent/eluent conditions. Stock solutions of the explosives were prepared in acetonitrile and diluted with acetone/water, acetonitrile/water, or methanol/water mixtures. Within 48h, these working solutions were repeatedly injected onto a silica column and eluted with acetonitrile/water or methanol/water mobile phases. Under all conditions, 2,4-dinitroanisole was stable, whereas 2,4,6-trinitroaniline was stable only in the methanol/water system. Regarding the other compounds, a more or less pronounced decomposition occurred making the reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography analysis difficult or even impossible. The stock standards of 2,4-dinitroanisole and 2,4,6-trinitroaniline were stable for at least 12 months. In addition, some leachate samples were collected from a former explosive factory in Germany and analyzed for nitroaromatic compounds. 2,4,6-Trinitroaniline was detected at concentrations of 60.7-245.5 microg/l.

Gas chromatographic and mass spectrometric determination of nitroaromatics in water

Several methods for the extraction of nitroaromatic compounds from water were compared. High recoveries were achieved with discontinuous or continuous extraction of water with dichloromethane and by adsorption on Amberlite XAD-2, -4 and -8 resins (1:1:1) and elution with dichloromethane. The recoveries obtained with solid-phase extraction using cyano-, phenyl- or octadecyl-bonded phases varied, depending on the compounds studied, and were often low. Nitroaromatic compounds were determined by gas chromatography using an electron-capture or a chemiluminescence detector (thermal energy analyser) and by mass spectrometry using electron impact and positive- and negative-ion chemical ionization.

Fungal transformation of 2,4-dinitrotoluene and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene

Screening of 190 fungi representing 98 genera showed that the ability to transform 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene was common, whereas transformation of 2,4-dinitrotoluene was rare.