Author(s)

R.P. Philp, B. Smallwood & J. Allen

Abstract

Once a crude oil is spilled in the environment, changes to the composition of the spilled oil will occur. Evaporation and water washing cause the initial changes, followed by photo-oxidation and biodegradation. Correlations between spilled oils and suspected sources are normally based on techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS). Whilst generally successful, heavily weathered residues or refined products are often extremely difficult to correlate by GC or GCMS. In this paper results from a relatively new correlation technique, gas chromatography-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GCIRMS) are discussed. GCIRMS permits the determination of the isotopic composition of individual components in

Keywords