Comprehensive Chemical Characterization of Hydrocarbons in NIST Standard Reference Material 2779 Gulf of Mexico Crude Oil
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Science; Aerosol Dynamics, Inc., Berkeley, CA (United States); National Physical Lab. (NPL), Teddington (United Kingdom)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Science
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Science; Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Science; Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada). Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Chemical Sciences Division
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Science and Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Comprehensive chemical information is needed to understand the environmental fate and impact of hydrocarbons released during oil spills. However, chemical information remains incomplete because of the limitations of current analytical techniques and the inherent chemical complexity of crude oils. In this study, gas chromatography (GC)-amenable C9-C33 hydrocarbons were comprehensively characterized from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Standard Reference Material (NIST SRM) 2779 Gulf of Mexico crude oil by GC coupled to vacuum ultraviolet photoionization mass spectrometry (GC/VUV-MS), with a mass balance of 68 ± 22%. This technique overcomes one important limitation faced by traditional GC and even comprehensive 2D gas chromatography (GC×GC): the necessity for individual compounds to be chromatographically resolved from one another in order to be characterized. VUV photoionization minimizes fragmentation of the molecular ions, facilitating the characterization of the observed hydrocarbons as a function of molecular weight (carbon number, NC), structure (number of double bond equivalents, NDBE), and mass fraction (mg kg-1), which represent important metrics for understanding their fate and environmental impacts. Linear alkanes (8 ± 1%), bran ched alkanes (11 ± 2%), and cycloalkanes (37 ± 12%) dominated the mass with the largest contribution from cycloalkanes containing one or two rings and one or more alkyl side chains (27 ± 9%). Linearity and good agreement with previous work for a subset of >100 components and for the sum of compound classes provided confidence in our measurements and represents the first independent assessment of our analytical approach and calibration methodology. Another crude oil collected from the Marlin platform (35 km northeast of the Macondo well) was shown to be chemically identical within experimental errors to NIST SRM 2779, demonstrating that Marlin crude is an appropriate surrogate oil for researchers conducting laboratory research into impacts of the DeepWater Horizon disaster.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) and Gulf Integrated Spill Response (GISR) Consortium; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; DGE 1106400; SA12-09/GoMRI-006
- OSTI ID:
- 1454441
- Journal Information:
- Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 49, Issue 22; Related Information: © 2015 American Chemical Society.; ISSN 0013-936X
- Publisher:
- American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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