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 esti mation of total oil hydrocarbons in sediments. The method developed involve d an HPLC technique using a group separation. The oil was separated into sa turates, aromatics and polar compounds after removing the asphaltenes gravi metrically. Determination was carried out by quantifying the aromatics and polar hydrocarbon fractions of a reference oil (Arabian light), against whi ch 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, r espectively. 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). Simi lar results were obtained for the polar fraction. The method was compared w ith an existing Spectrofluorometric method.