A method to estimate the octanol-air partition coefficient of semivolatile organic compounds.

A multicolumn method for the estimation of the octanol-air partition coefficient (K(OA)) of semivolatile compounds is described. The method is based on the retention time of a compound on gas chromatographic columns of different selectivity and polarity. Log K(OA) values of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were estimated with the novel multicolumn method. The results were in excellent agreement with previously published data using a generator column method. Therefore, we used our multicolumn method to estimate K(OA) for more than 100 PCB congeners.