A better understanding of the fate of spilled oil at the molecular level would go a long way toward improving remediation technology. A new tool devised at Florida International University (FIU) is expected to contribute to such improvement by allowing scientists to simultaneously examine crude oil molecules by mass, size and, Paolo Benigni is part of the FIU research team that developed a new tool to assess oil spill damage. (Source: FIU)shape without the need of lengthy sample preparation and separation steps.

The approach combines trapped ion mobility spectrometry with Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry.

“The new analytical development will increase the number of molecules that can be examined six-fold, giving scientists a more detailed look into the chemical changes crude oil undergoes in a spill,” said Paolo Benigni, Ph.D. candidate in FIU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

The information obtained could help responders predict toxicity of spilled oil, how far it might travel, and how long it would likely stay in the environment. Applied to the analysis of the low energy water accommodated fraction (WAF) of a crude oil as a function of exposure to light, the technique provides heteroatom series identification and new insights into WAF isomeric complexity for a better evaluation of the degree of chemical and structural photoinduced transformation.

The tool can also be used to study other contaminants in diverse water and land environments. With oil accounting for a large percentage of the world’s energy consumption, accidents with drilling, production, and transportation are always a possibility. Improved remediation techniques are always the goal.