Evaluating the reliability of solid phase extraction techniques for hydrocarbon analysis by GC-MS.

Autor: Srinivasan P; Aramco Americas- Houston Research Center, 16300 Park Row Drive, Houston, TX 77084, USA. Electronic address: poorna.srinivasan@aramcoamericas.com., Arguello EME; Aramco Americas- Houston Research Center, 16300 Park Row Drive, Houston, TX 77084, USA., Atwah I; Saudi Aramco, Dhahran 31311, Saudi Arabia.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of chromatography. A [J Chromatogr A] 2024 Nov 22; Vol. 1737, pp. 465435. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Oct 12.
DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2024.465435
Abstrakt: Saturate and aromatic compounds are essential in the petroleum industry for assessing the thermal maturity of source rocks and oils, which is critical for basin modeling and sweet-spot mapping. These compounds also play a role in environmental applications, such as oil spill fingerprinting and biogeochemistry. However, the analysis of these compounds by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) requires meticulous and time-consuming separation processes. Traditional methods like normal-phase liquid column chromatography (LCC) involve large volumes of harmful solvents. This study evaluates the effectiveness of five different sorbents using solid-phase extraction (SPE) techniques-neutral Si, SiOH, Ag-ion, neutral Al, and Ag-ion mixed with activated silica-compared to LCC. The goal was to discern differences in peak resolution, concentration, and isomer ratios of saturate and aromatic compounds for thermal maturity and source rock assessments. The results show that SiOH, neutral Si, and neutral Al do not fully separate aromatic compounds from the saturate fraction, sometimes leaving 40-100% of aromatics within the saturate fraction. Ag-ion mixed with activated silica provided the best separation, resulting in up to 23 times higher aromatic concentration than SiOH. This method is more reliable for quantifying both saturate and aromatic compounds, increases the efficiency of hydrocarbon evaluations, and reduces solvent consumption by 63%, offering a more sustainable approach to hydrocarbon analysis.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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