RT journal article
T1 Characterization of Biodegraded Ignitable Liquids by Headspace-Ion Mobility Spectrometry
A1 Pérez Calle, José Luis
A1 Ferreiro González, Marta
A1 Aliaño González, María José
A1 Fernández Barbero, Gerardo
A1 Palma Lovillo, Miguel
A2 Química Analítica
K1 ignitable liquids
K1 biodegradation
K1 sensor
K1 characterization
K1 headspace
K1 ion mobility spectrometry
K1 chemometrics
AB The detection of ignitable liquids (ILs) can be crucial when it comes to determining arson cases. Such identification of ILs is a challenging task that may be affected by a number of factors. Microbial degradation is considered one of three major processes that can alter the composition of IL residues. Since biodegradation is a time related phenomenon, it should be studied at different stages of development. This article presents a method based on ion mobility spectroscopy (IMS) which has been used as an electronic nose. In particular, ion mobility sum spectrum (IMSS) in combination with chemometric techniques (hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA)) has been applied for the characterization of different biodegraded ILs. This method intends to use IMSS to identify a range of ILs regardless of their degree of biodegradation. Three ILs (diesel, gasoline and kerosene) from three different commercial brands were evaluated after remaining in a soil substrate for several lengths of time (0, 2, 5, 13 and 38 days). The HCA results showed the samples' trend to fall into categories characterized by ILs type and biodegradation time. The LDAs allowed a 99% successful classification of the samples according to the IL type. This is the first time that an HS-IMS technique has been used to detect ILs that have undergone biodegradation processes. The results show that IMS may be a promising alternative to the current standard method based on gas-chromatography for the analysis of biodegraded ILs. Furthermore, no pretreatment of the samples nor the use of a solvent is required.
PB MDPI
SN 1424-8220
YR 2020
FD 2020-11
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/24101
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/24101
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 07-nov-2026