Determination of volatile fatty acids in wastewater by solvent extraction and gas chromatography

The purpose of this study was to develop a liquid-liquid extraction method for the analysis of volatile fatty acids collected at the elutriation units of Unit 3, 4 and 5 at Johannesburg Water-Northern Works Wastewater Treatment Plant. Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) method employing dichloromethane (DCM) and methyl-tert-butyl-ether (MTBE) as extracting solvents was used during the quantitative analysis of volatile fatty acids namely acetic, propionic, butyric, isobutyric, valeric, isovaleric and heptanoic acid. The detection of the extracts was by gas chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometer operating under electron ionization mode (GC-EI-MS). The results showed that MTBE was a better extraction solvent than DCM as it gave much higher recoveries (>5 folds). On the other hand, the overall reactor performance for all the three units in the period when the samples were collected, which was measured by the ratio of propionic to acetic acid was good since the ratio o did not exceed 1.4 with the exception of the samples collected on the 3rd of October where the ratio exceeded 1.4 significantly. The concentration of acetic acid, another indicator for the reactor performance in all three units was way below 800 mg/L thus the digester balance was on par.