engleski

Chemical Fingerprinting of Different Oil Types in Oil Spill Identification

Most spills take place on land, including oil spills from pipelines, underground storage tanks, and aboveground storage containers. Most oil pollution in the oceans comes from the run-off of oil and fuel from land-based sources rather than from accidental spills. There are two mayor analytical approach for chemical fingerprinting different oil spills – gas chromatography (GC-FID) and analysis of biomarkers in crude oil and petroleum products using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In the context of oil spill identification only a rough categorization of oil is made into: light fuel oil, lubricating oil, heavy fuel oil and crude oil. Similarities or dissimilarities in gas chromatograms and mass chromatograms of oils are not easily discernible by non-experts in the field of oil identification. Biomarkers can be detected in low quantities (ppm and sub-ppm level) in the presence of a wide variety of other types of petroleum hydrocarbons by the use of the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Biomarkers are one of the most important hydrocarbon groups in petroleum for chemical fingerprinting. They are complex molecules derived from formerly living organisms. The biomarkers found in crude oils, rocks, and sediments and because they retain all or most of original carbon skeleton of the original natural product and this structural similarity reveals more information about their origins than other compounds. In the past decade, use of biomarker fingerprinting techniques in combination with GC-FID chromatography, have been playing a prominent role in almost all oil spill work.

Chemical Fingerprinting ; Oil Spills

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