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Source Benzene Concentration

The model used a concentration of 40 mg/L benzene in the source area. In the model, the source area corresponded to the free product area from the site investigation. The concentration was intended to represent fresh gasoline. Is this a reasonable value or not? Modeled Source Extent

The effective solubility calculator can be used to estimate expected water phase concentrations of chemicals that compose fuels. Note the careful wording: since the fuels are composed of many chemicals, the solubility of any given chemical will not equal is aqueous solubility. For example, the solubility of benzene is often given as 1780 mg/L. This is the solubility of liquid benzene, not the effective solubility of benzene that results from contact between a mixture of chemicals that includes benzene (the fuel) and water.

At this site, like most sites, the release occurred before the site investigation commenced. It's impossible to go back in time to collect a sample of the fuel and analyse it so that we would know its composition. The composition is one required input for effective solubility calculation. To estimate the effective solubility without a site-specific fuel composition means were looking for a ball-park answer. We'll use some example fuels to estiamate effective solubility.


Calculator icon Use the effective solubility calculator to estimate the solubility for benzene, given a certain gasoline composition.

Also use the calculator to see how much benzene must be in gasoline to obtain an effective solubility of 40 mg/l.


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