Polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) are organic compounds that include several sub-groups of toxic, persistent and carcinogenic environmental pollutants consisting of two or more non-substituted or substituted aromatic rings. Due to the complexity of PAC-mixtures found in the environment it can be challenging and time-consuming to track the sources of contamination. In the present study, multivariate data analysis (MVDA) models, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were applied to track sources of PACs at contaminated sites. Based on the chemical profile of 78 PACs obtained in GC-MS analysis of soils, 26 observations were classified according to their petrogenic, pyrogenic or urban background soil origin. Two soil samples of unknown origin collected at a contaminated site in Mjölby, Sweden, were successfully fitted to the validated PLS-DA model and their origins were determined as petrogenic. The study shows that validated PLS-DA models can be applied to predict the petrogenic, pyrogenic and urban background soil origins of samples collected at PAC contaminated sites, thus to track the sources of contamination. It is also concluded that 16 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are not sufficient to predict the origin of contamination with PCA or PLS-DA.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-64627 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Sinioja, Tim |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Institutionen för naturvetenskap och teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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