█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ANALYSIS OF PETROLEUM HYDROCARBONS IN SOIL FROM VIEW OF BIOREMEDIATION PROCESS R. Mračnová1, L. Soják1, R. Kubinec1, A. Kraus2, A. Eszényiová3, I. Ostrovský1 1Chemical Institute, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynska dolina CH-2, 842 1 5 Bratislava (Slovakia), e-mail:
[email protected] 2Institut of Analytical and Environmental Chemistry, Martin Luther University, 061 20 Halle (Germany) 3Slovnaft Ltd., Research Institute of Petroleum and Hydrocarbon Gases, Vlcie hrdlo, 82412 Bratislava (Slovakia) ABSTRACT The pollution of the environment by petroleum hydrocarbons is the most often pollution of them all. Nevertheless, hydrocarbons present in environment can be not only of petroleum or anthropogenic origin, but of biogenic as well. Typically the hydrocarbons are presented in the environment as very complex mixtures of individual compounds with very different chemical structure, wide range of the boiling points ( ≈ 800 oC) as well as with the wide range of the number of carbon atoms. Immediately they are spread in any environmental matrix the complex physical, chemical and biochemical reactions start. A lot of methods have been developed and new are permanently in progress for the monitoring and control of petroleum hydrocarbons contamination and/or soils bioremediation. Generally, all methods by whose the hydrocarbons contaminants are determined in GC-FID system do not satisfied recommendations for enough accurate and precise results. Hyphenation of capillary gas chromatography and mass selective de- tector operated in the selective ion monitoring mode essentially allows detai- led specification of non-polar extractable hydrocarbons. Isoprenoid alkanes, alkylhomologues of aromatic hydrocarbons and polycyclic alkanes hopanes- like were investigated as markers for recognition of petroleum and biogenic contamination.