HDPE Geomembranes Exhumed from Environmental Facilities Evaluated by Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

A geomembrane is a material of the geosynthetics group used as a liner in various applications including environmental protection systems.Two High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) geomembranes exhumed used in different applications including the exposure of various types of contaminants in different period of time were evaluated.The Gas Chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) technique was applied to determine and identify the Organic Compounds using their masses (m/z) and spectra (fragmentation) for characterization of materials and compare with other 5 groups from a previous study and multivariate analysis were applied.Moreover, 347 groups of compounds were considered and 154 met with interpretation, p-value criterion < 0.05 and cut-off criterion of 2.0 for the fold change analysis and then considered.Results were obtained for common compounds for all samples (markers) and specific compounds for each exhumed sample.The combination of GC-MS analysis with multivariate was applied and shown to be an interesting tool for this characterization.The differentiation related to the five groups and the two exhumed samples can be observed.The marker compounds can also be compared with other groups, classification models can be proposed and also contribute to future studies for different geomembranes in different applications.