View article

The sorption behavior of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in the environment has been the focus of numerous studies. In most of them, the role of aliphatic domains in sorption has been ignored, even although aliphatic components make up a significant portion of the soil organic matter (SOM). The objective of this review is to elucidate the role of the molecular descriptors − aromaticity and aliphaticity − of natural and engineered sorbents as sorption domains for HOCs in the environment. The data, collected from a large and diverse literature data set, show that phenanthrene, like other HOCs, has a strong affinity for aliphatic SOM domains. In many cases, sorption coefficients are higher than those with aromatic-rich sorbents. No significant correlations between either aromaticity or aliphaticity and sorption affinity were recorded for such a large and diverse data set. On the basis of the data set from our …