title: Effect of housing geometry on the performance of Chemcatcher passive sampler for the monitoring of hydrophobic organic pollutants in water.
abstract: Passive sampling of pollutants in water has been gaining acceptance for environmental monitoring. Previously, an integrative passive sampler (the Chemcatcher) was developed and calibrated for the measurement of time weighted average concentrations of hydrophobic pollutants in water. Effects of physicochemical properties and environmental variables (water temperature and turbulence) on kinetic and thermodynamic parameters characterising the exchange of analytes between the sampler and water have been published. In this study, the effect of modification in sampler housing geometry on these calibration parameters was studied. The results obtained for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons show that reducing the depth of the cavity in the sampler body geometry increased the exchange kinetics by approximately twofold, whilst having no effect on the correlation between the uptake and offload kinetics of analytes. The use of performance reference compounds thus avoids the need for extensive re-calibration when the sampler body geometry is modified.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinského 9, 81237 Bratislava, Slovakia.
authors.forename: Tomás
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lobpreis
authors.forename: Branislav
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vrana
authors.forename: Ewa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dominiak
authors.forename: Katarína
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dercová
authors.forename: Graham A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Mills
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Greenwood
mesh_terms: D002138:Calibration; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D004867:Equipment Design; D005449:Fluorenes / Q000032:analysis; D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions; D010616:Phenanthrenes / Q000032:analysis; D011084:Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons / Q000032:analysis*; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D005449:Fluorenes; D010616:Phenanthrenes; D011084:Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical; C041509:fluorene; C031181:phenanthrene