Shamsunnahar Suchana
PhD candidate
University of Toronto
Shamsunnahar Suchana is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto and received a Connaught Scholarship. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Her research focuses on developing novel analytical methods to push the limits of compound specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) towards very low concentration. She then applies these methods to understand contaminants’ fate at contaminated sites.
PRESENTATION TITLE
Polar organic chemical integrative sampler (POCIS) for compound specific isotope analysis of substituted chlorobenzenes
Compound specific isotope analysis (CSIA) is now an accepted tool to monitor natural attenuation and quantify the extent of contaminant degradation in groundwater. To date, CSIA application is limited to heavily contaminated sites due to the high detection limit of isotope ratio mass spectrometers. This work evaluated polar organic chemical integrative sampler (POCIS) for CSIA that are intended to preconcentrate low concentration analytes in situ. We showed that neither diffusion through nor adsorption onto POCIS resulted in significant changes in analytes’ carbon isotope signature (<0.7‰) during a 60-day deployment, except for 3,4-DCNB (1.6‰). The results also suggested that POCIS could accumulate the target analytes for CSIA at concentrations down to 1-10 ?g/L and potentially lower. This work opens a new avenue for CSIA in low concentration environments, e.g., rivers, constructed wetlands, and long-term remediation sites without extracting large volumes of water.