How does one determine if the pesticide active ingredient is in the water phase or oil/sludge phase of a wastewater? Can one use alcohol-water coefficients?
Octanol-water coefficients can be used to determine whether a pesticide active ingredient is likely to be in the water phase or the oil phase of a wastewater. However, octanol-water coefficients are determined using a pure octanol-water system, whereas PFPR wastewaters typically contain a variety of contaminants that may render the octanol-water coefficient invalid for a particular wastewater. In addition, octanol-water coefficients are not available for many pesticide active ingredients. Therefore, the various phases of a wastewater may need to be chemically analyzed to determine what fraction of pesticide active ingredient has partitioned to each phase.
