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ABSTRACT
Due to the major development of crude oil industry it is very important to identify the source of the natural petroleum in order to improve the quality of products and to ensure the large variety of consumers of its authenticity. Literature provides other aspect of this type of analysis that is based on extensively damages caused by the oil spills upon the human health, marine life, terrestrial life and natural resources. Gas chromatography technique coupled with mass spectrometry was used because of the highly complex hydrocarbon compound and this method led to a better knowledge of the hydrocarbon composition type of petroleum. In order to obtain specific, accurate and successful oil fingerprinting results from petroleum analysis it is very important to characterized, link them to the known sources, appropriate sampling, analytical approaches and data interpretation strategies. This article highlights the most recent development and advances of chemical analysis methodologies which are most frequently used in oil spill characterization and identification studies.
KEYWORDS: petroleum hydrocarbons, oil, gas chromatography, fingerprinting.
1.INTRODUCTION
Petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs), made up only of carbon and hydrogen atoms, are a very large group of compounds that, by definition, are found in crude oil, as well as other sources of petroleum like natural gas, coal, and other bitumen.
Because petroleum hydrocarbons form an almost infinite number of individual and unique organic molecules, chemists have grouped petroleum hydrocarbons into three main groups: alkane, alkene and aromatic hydrocarbons. Alkane or paraffins are the major constituents of crude oil and usually the major constituent of petroleum products. Alkenes or olefins are not constituents of crude oil, but rather are formed during the refining steps that are used to make commercial petroleum products. Aromatic hydrocarbons contain at least one 6membered ring of carbon atoms that also has 3 double bonds in it.
Alkanes and alkenes have limited toxicity while aromatic hydrocarbons are the most toxic constituents of petroleum products.
Crude oil varies widely in appearance and viscosity from field to field, characterization and source identification of oils from various fields is necessary. One of such ways of doing this is by analyzing the hydrocarbon fractions. Petroleum hydrocarbons fingerprinting (Gas chromatography fingerprinting) analysis for quantitative and qualitative oil characterization is often used for evaluating the range of...