Professional paper
https://doi.org/10.15255/KUI.2020.059
Geochemical Investigation of Tar Balls Collected on a Beach on Žirje Island (Croatia) Using Petroleum Biomarkers
Slavica Marinović
orcid.org/0000-0001-9256-4142
; Ina-Industrija nafte Plc., Exploration & Production BD, Lovinčićeva 4, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Hana Fajković
orcid.org/0000-0003-3901-228X
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Science, Department of Geology, Horvatovac 102a, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Vlado Cuculić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1919-6173
; Ruđer Bošković Institute, Division for Marine Environment Research, Bijenička c. 54, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Tar balls are frequently reported as indicators of the extent of marine pollution owing to spill incidents of crude oil or petroleum products. Representative tar ball samples collected on a beach on Žirje Island, Croatia, were geochemically characterised by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC/MS) in order to identify correlations between them and investigate potential sources. The chemical analysis of petroleum biomarkers, hopanes, and steranes, detected by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) generates information of great importance to environmental forensic investigations in terms of determining the source of spilled oil, differentiating and correlating oils, and monitoring the degradation process and weathering state of oils under a wide variety of conditions.
The chromatographic signatures of hopane and sterane biomarkers in tar ball samples from Žirje Island were compared. Characteristic hopane and sterane fingerprints show that all the tar ball samples originated from crude oil spills. This study indicates that, the major source of tar balls was likely to be the same type of crude oil as evident from the petroleum biomarker fingerprints.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Keywords
tar balls; oil spills; GC/MS; petroleum biomarkers
Hrčak ID:
257558
URI
Publication date:
18.5.2021.
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