Testing for Petroleum Hydrocarbon Compounds; Series 1
There is a significant number of petroleum hydrocarbon impacted sites across the United States resulting from a wide range of past industrial, military, and petroleum production, and distribution practices.
Difficulties in evaluating and remediating these sites arise from the complexity of the regulatory, scientific, and economic issues regarding impacted soil and water. Most investigations involving petroleum hydrocarbons are regulated by the states with different requirements in methodologies, action levels, and cleanup criteria.
The chemical composition of petroleum products is complex and varied and changes over time and distance when released to the environment. These factors make it difficult to select the most appropriate analytical test methods for evaluating environmental samples and to accurately interpret and use the data.
Gasoline is a complex mixture of over 500 hydrocarbons that may have between 5 to 12 carbons. Given below are illustrations of a few of the gasoline hydrocarbon molecules.
(The gray balls represent carbon atoms, the white represent hydrogen and the red or yellow bars represent the number of electrons that two connected atoms share. The carbon is illustrated larger than hydrogen because its mass is 12 times bigger.)
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