Non-targeted Screening of Halogenated Organics in Wastewater

Oral Presentation

Prepared by D. Schiessel
Babcock Laboratories, Inc, 6100 Quail Valley Ct, Riverside, CA, 92507-0704, United States


Contact Information: dschiessel@babcocklabs.com; 951-653-3351


ABSTRACT

As water supplies in California dropped significantly, there has been considerable discussion of water reuse. This has led to some discussion on whether a particular water discharge source from the Stringfellow Superfund Site could be further remediated by a wastewater treatment plant and perhaps be subsequently used to supplement the drinking water supply in Orange County. When the analytical data were evaluated to see if this source was suitable, it was noted that there were some discrepancies in the data. Most notably, the Total Organic Halide (TOX) results were much higher than the total of all the individual analyses. To investigate this issue, a non-targeted screening approach was developed to tentatively identify and quantify these extremely polar halogenated chemicals which are non-extractable from water. An HPLC equipped with a triple quadrupole was used to analyze samples using four mass spectrometry modes including full scan and product scan. There were eight halogenated pollutants identified and present at concentrations accounting for 50-60% of the total TOX. About half of that (25-30% of TOX) was one chemical in particular, the disulfonic acid derivative of 4,4’-DDE, and was present at concentrations of 10-30mg/L. Although none of the identified pollutants were available as reference materials, DDE Disulfonate was successfully synthesized with yields in excess of 98%.