Traditional tools for routine environmental analysis and forensic chemistry of petroleum has relied almost exclusively on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), although there are many compounds in crude oil (and its transformation products) not chromatographically separated or amenable to GC-MS due to volatility. To enhance current and future studies on the fate, transport, and fingerprinting of the Macondo well oil released from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, we created an extensive molecular library of the unadulterated petroleum and a tar ball collected on the beach of Louisiana. We employed comprehensive two-dimensional comprehensive GC�GC and ultrahigh resolution Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometry in tandem to compare compositional changes at the molecular level between native and weathered crude oil samples that reveals enrichment in polar compounds that further challenges GC-based characterization. The combined approach provides unprecedented detail and insight into environmental fate of oil spills, improved toxicological studies, molecular modeling of biotic/abiotic weathering, and future comprehensive molecular characterization for petroleum-derived releases. In this initial effort, we catalogued more than 23,000 acidic, basic, and nonpolar neutral elemental compositions for the Macondo well crude oil that provides an archive for future chemical analyses of the environmental consequences of the oil spill. This work was supported by NSF Division of Materials Research through DMR-0654118, NSF Division of Chemistry through Rapid Grant CHE-1049753, BP/The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, and the State of Florida.

Expanding the analytical window of oil spill characterization by FT-ICR mass spectrometry: From the reservoir to the beach

245th National Meeting (2013)

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