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Journal ArticleDOI

Method for determination of methyl tert-butyl ether and its degradation products in water

TLDR
In this paper, an analytical method is described that can detect the major alkyl ether compounds that are used as gasoline oxygenates (methyl tert-butyl ether, MTBE, ETBE, and tert-amyl methyl ether, TAME) in water at sub-ppb concentrations.
Abstract
An analytical method is described that can detect the major alkyl ether compounds that are used as gasoline oxygenates (methyl tert-butyl ether, MTBE; ethyl tert-butyl ether, ETBE; and tert-amyl methyl ether, TAME) and their most characteristic degradation products (tert-butyl alcohol, TBA; tert-butyl formate, TBF; and tert-amyl alcohol, TAA) in water at sub-ppb concentrations. The new method involves gas chromatography (GC) with direct aqueous injec tion (DAI) onto a polar column via a splitless injector, coupled with detection by mass spectrometry (MS). DAI-GC/MS gives excellent agreement with conventional purge-and-trap methods for MTBE over a wide range of environmentally relevant concentrations. The new method can also give simultaneous identification of polar compounds that might occur as degradation products of gasoline oxygenates, such as TBA, TBF, TAA, methyl acetate, and acetone. When the method was applied to effluent from a column microcosm prepared with core material from an urban site in New...

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Aerobic MTBE biodegradation: an examination of past studies, current challenges and future research directions

TL;DR: It is likely that a bioremediation strategy involving direct metabolism, cometabolism, bioaugmentation, or some combination thereof could be applied as a feasible and cost-effective treatment method for MTBE contamination.
Journal ArticleDOI

In Situ MTBE Biodegradation Supported by Diffusive Oxygen Release

TL;DR: It is suggested that it is possible to create permeable in situ treatment zones solely by releasing oxygen to support native microbial degradation of MTBE.
Journal ArticleDOI

Determination of methyl tert-butyl ether in surface water by use of solid-phase microextraction.

TL;DR: In this article, a new method based on solid phase microextraction (SPME) was developed for the determination of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in surface water at sub-ppb concentrations.
Journal ArticleDOI

Trace analysis of ethanol, MTBE, and related oxygenate compounds in water using solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.

TL;DR: Replicate analyses in fortified reagent and groundwater spiked with microgram per liter concentrations of ethanol and MTBE indicate quantitative and reproducible recovery of these and related oxygenate compounds.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Preliminary assessment of the occurrence and possible sources of MTBE in groundwater in the United States, 1993-1994

TL;DR: In this article, the second most frequently detected chemical in samples of shallow ambient groundwater from urban areas that were collected during 1993-1994 as part of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water-Quality Assessment program.
Journal ArticleDOI

Review of the environmental behavior and fate of methyl tert-butyl ether

TL;DR: A review of pertinent equations and current research indicates that when gasoline oxygenated with methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) comes into contact with water, large amounts of MTBE can dissolve as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI

Intrinsic biodegradation of MTBE and BTEX in a gasoline‐contaminated aquifer

TL;DR: In this paper, three-dimensional field monitoring of a gasoline plume showed rapid decay of toluene and ethylbenzene during downgradient transport with slower decay of xylenes, benzene, and MTBE under mixed aerobic-denitrifying conditions.
Journal ArticleDOI

Anaerobic Biodegradation of Gasoline Oxygenates: Extrapolation of Information to Multiple Sites and Redox Conditions

TL;DR: The ether oxygenates were generally not degraded when incubated with various inocula, regardless of the electron acceptor status, and the partial transformation of methyl tert-butyl ether to tert- butanol after a 152-day acclimation period in a single replicate from a river sediment chronically contaminated with fuel suggested that the latter transformation was biologically catalyzed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Photocatalytic degradation of methyl-tert-butyl ether in TiO2 slurries : a proposed reaction scheme

TL;DR: In this article, the degradation of methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE) has been shown to be readily degraded photocatalytically with an initial pseudo first-order rate constant of 1.2 · 10−3 s−1.
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