Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon in biochar

Abstract In certain concentration PAHs has hazardous effect to the environment particularly human. PAHs have hazardous effect as carcinogen and in long period persistent in the environment. Incomplete burning of biomass in biochar production process can resulted PAHs. In agriculture, biochar functioned as soil conditioner to increase soil fertility. We have to make sure that production of biochar contains low PAHs. Our department was setting some standard methods as reference methods in Indonesia for determination of PAHs, and involved in environment research, which was very important for Indonesia. Since the most of determination of PAHs used special commercial PAHs column that was expensive, our experiment carried out the determination of PAHs in biochar using HPLC and GC/MS with common column for various analyte of C18 for HPLC and (5%-Phenyl)-methylpolysiloxane for GC/MS. Furthermore in this experiment, we were used diode aray detector and fluoresence detector in HPLC. The result showed that both HPLC and GC/MS can be used to determine PAHs only by using common column. Biochar that we produced contain 16 PAHs compound with concentration range from 0.07 to 9.36 μg/g while mean concentration of USEPA PAHs in reference biochar about 0.034 to 1.75 μg/g. Therefore, some PAHs compound were over the limit of USEPA standar in biochar