Stable carbon and hydrogen isotopic fractionations of alkane compounds and crude oil during aerobically microbial degradation

Abstract

Normal alkane compounds dodecane, pentadecane, hexadecane, octadecane, tetracosane, isoprenoid alkane pristane and a crude oil sample were aerobically biodegraded with a pure bacterial strain GIM2.5 and white rot fungus Phanerochaete Chrysosporium-1767 to monitor the kinetic fractionation of the molecular stable carbon (δ13C) and hydrogen (δD) isotopes in the course of biodegradation. Both δ13C (V-PDB) and δD (V-SMOW) remained stable for the standard alkane compounds and n-alkane components (from n-C13 to n-C25) of the crude oil, generally varying in the range of ±0.5‰ and ±5‰ respectively, within the range of the instrumental precisions, especially for those molecularly heavier than n-C16 during microbial degradation. These results indicate that molecular stable carbon and hydrogen isotopic fingerprints can be promising indicators for tracing the sources of petroleum-related contaminants in the environment, especially in the case of severe weathering when they are difficult to be unambiguously identified by the chemical fingerprints alone.