Accelerated passive dosing of hydrophobic complex mixtures - controlling level and composition in aquatic tests.

Petroleum products and essential oils are complex mixtures of hydrophobic and volatile chemicals and are categorized as substances of unknown or variable composition, complex reaction products or biological materials (UVCBs). In aquatic testing and research of such mixtures it is challenging to establish initial concentrations without the addition of co-solvents, to maintain constant concentrations during the test and to keep a constant mixture composition in dilution series and throughout test duration. Passive dosing was here designed to meet these challenges by maximizing the surface area (Adonor/Vmedium=3.8 cm2/mL) and volume (Vdonor/Vmedium > 0.1 L/L) of the passive dosing donor in order to ensure rapid mass transfer and avoid donor depletion for all mixture constituents. Cracked gas oil, cedarwood Virginia oil and lavender oil served as model mixtures. This study advances the field by i) showing accelerated dosing kinetics for 68 cracked gas oil constituents with typical equilibration times of 5-10 minutes and for 21 cederwood Virginia oil constituents with typical equilibration times < 1 h, ii) demonstrating how to control mixture concentration and composition in aquatic tests, and iii) discussing the fundamental differences between solvent spiking, water accommodated fractions and passive dosing.