Progress of Cryogenics and Isotopes Separation , ISSN: 1582-2575
2012, Volume 15, Issue 2

An Overview of Analytical Techniques for Petroleum Hydrocarbons Chemical Fingerprinting

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.