Knowledge Bank

Weathering experiments on over 60 petroleum samples have been conducted to determine the effect of marine weathering on the infrared “fingerprint”. Results have shown that the spectra are sufficiently altered in some cases to cause difficulty in matching a weathered unknown to the correct unweathered reference oil. This problem and several solutions to the problem will be discussed. Furthermore, an overall scheme for the identification of petroleum samples through infrared spectroscopy and computer analysis of the infrared data will be presented.