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Mobility of a Polyether Trisiloxane Surfactant in Soil: Soil/Water Distribution Coefficients and Leaching in a Soil Column

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Abstract

Polyether trisiloxane surfactants are widespread used as agricultural adjuvants because they increase the activity and the rainfastness of pesticides. On the contrary to pesticides, the environmental fate of agricultural adjuvants has not been much investigated, yet. Especially for trisiloxane surfactants, the knowledge on their environmental fate is scarce. To fill this gap, the mobility of a polyether trisiloxane surfactant on soil was studied. With a sorption batch equilibrium method, distribution coefficients between water and soil (K d, K oc, and K clay) were estimated for two standard soils (loam and sandy loam) and for every homologue of the trisiloxane surfactant. The obtained values for K d were between 15 and 135 cm3 g−1, indicating that the trisiloxane surfactant is only slightly mobile in soil. The leaching in soil column was studied in a worst case scenario where the application of the trisiloxane surfactant was done on quartz sand and was immediately followed by a heavy rainfall. Less than 0.01 % of the initially applied trisiloxane surfactant had leached through 20 cm of quartz sand. Based on the K d values and the leaching in a soil column, the studied trisiloxane surfactant seems to be unlikely to leach through soil after application as agricultural adjuvant.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the German Association for Gas and Water, a registered technical-scientific association (Deutscher Verein des Gas- und Wasserfaches e.V. DVGW), project W 2-01-10. We are grateful to CHT R. Beitlich GmbH for the cooperation and for providing HANSA ADD 1055 for the soil column experiments. We thank Dr. Oliver Happel for the picture of superspreading and Dr. Florian Storck for the fruitful discussions during the elaboration of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DVGW Water Technology Center (DVGW-Technologiezentrum Wasser, TZW), Karlsruher Str. 84, 76139, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Amandine Michel, Heinz-Jürgen Brauch & Frank Thomas Lange

  2. Technische Universität Dresden, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Institute of Water Chemistry, 01062, Dresden, Germany

    Amandine Michel & Eckhard Worch

  3. Institute of Environmental and Process Engineering UMTEC, HSR University of Applied Sciences, Oberseestrasse 10, 8640, Rapperswil, Switzerland

    Conrad Dietschweiler, Martina Böni & Michael Burkhardt

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  1. Amandine Michel
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  2. Conrad Dietschweiler
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  3. Martina Böni
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  4. Michael Burkhardt
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  5. Heinz-Jürgen Brauch
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  6. Eckhard Worch
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  7. Frank Thomas Lange
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Correspondence to Frank Thomas Lange.

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Michel, A., Dietschweiler, C., Böni, M. et al. Mobility of a Polyether Trisiloxane Surfactant in Soil: Soil/Water Distribution Coefficients and Leaching in a Soil Column. Water Air Soil Pollut 227, 66 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-016-2755-9

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