Characterization and Identification of Petroleum Hydrocarbons and Biomarkers by GC-FTIR and GC-MS

Abstract

Identification of petroleum hydrocarbons from crude and distilled oils by GC-MS is well known. The distilled crude and oils contain specific group of hydrocarbons are known as biomarkers bearing the information of their geographical source or origin and the geological past. These are diamondoids (adamantanes, diadamantanes, terpanes, steranes, sesquiterpanes, hopanes, norhopanes, etc.). The present article describes the identification of hydrocarbons using their IR spectra in the molecular fingerprinting region where every molecule shows its unique and characteristic individual vibrational frequencies. GC-FTIR spectrum of each of the individual components present in distilled oils was identified by proper standard library matching with the spectrum of the individual component. The GC-MS profiles of the biomarkers of different light and middle distilled fine products of samples from three leading oil companies, namely Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Indo-Burma Petroleum (IBP), and Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPC), differ from each other, indicating the variation of the sources of the crudes used by the companies. But nothing specific can be said about the origin of crudes from this limited data.