Soil type effects on petroleum contamination characterization using ultraviolet induced fluorescence excitation-emission matrices (EEMs) and parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC)

The ultraviolet induced fluorescence signatures of various petroleum products were evaluated in different soils to examine the impact of soil type, grain size, porosity, and mineralogy. The different soil matrices induced changes to the spectral features of petroleum hydrocarbon fluorescence excitation-emission matrices (EEMs). Once the effect of the soil matrix was characterized, fluorescence EEMs were analyzed using parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) and soft independent method of class analogy (SIMCA) to identify the petroleum products and their underlying aromatic hydrocarbon components. For quantitative analysis, total fluorescence values obtained from fluorescence EEMs of analyzed petroleum products were used to estimate their concentrations in different soil matrices. Results indicated that this approach provides identifying fingerprinting and reasonable estimate of concentrations for a number of petroleum products in different soils matrices.