| Description |
The purpose of this experiment was to design a characteristic leaching procedure for metals which provided results congruent with the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP), as proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. When this method was applied to soils from the Advanced Combustion Engineering and Research Center (ACERC), the data on the leachate concentrations for cadmium, chromium, and lead were repeatable and did not indicate a sample size influence. The new method utilized smaller sample sizes than the EPA TCLP. To verify that this smaller sample size did not change leachate results, samples were submitted for EPA TCLP analysis to an external laboratory. These results, for the metals of interest, were consistent with ACERC analyses. The order of adsorptive selectivity of the metals was chromium > lead > cadmium, with chromium being the least likely to leach out of a soil. Errors were suspected in the overall sample digestion method, since some metal recoveries were higher than 100% |
