Development of a simple monitoring technique for oil pollution in sediment

In this study an attempt was made to develop a reliable method for the estimation of total oil hydrocarbons in sediments. The method developed involved an HPLC technique using a group separation. The oil was separated into saturates, aromatics and polar compounds after removing the asphaltenes gravimetrically. Determination was carried out by quantifying the aromatics and polar hydrocarbon fractions of a reference oil (Arabian light), against which the unknown was assayed. Linear calibration curves were obtained for the aromatics and polar fractions over the range 1-12 mg/mL and 0.1-1 mg/mL, respectively. The reproducibility for the aromatics fraction was acceptable with a maximum error of 2.8 % (n=3) and recovery rate was 89.3 % (n=3). Similar results were obtained for the polar fraction. The method was compared with an existing Spectrofluorometric method.