Proposal for a deconvolution procedure for the gas chromatographic estimation of pristane and phytane in marine sediments

In this paper, a deconvolution procedure for improving the quantitative estimation of specific hydrocarbons by chromatographic techniques is reported. The proposed technique has been applied to the gas chromatographic determination of the pristane to phytane (pri/phy) ratio, an important parameter for the evaluation of biogenic and anthropogenic contributions present in the hydrocarbon content of marine sediments. The determinations of pri/phy can be hardly performed because in the complex mixture of hydrocarbons extracted from marine sediments, their peaks are strongly overlapped with other hydrocarbon peaks. The proposed procedure allows the reconstruction of the two peaks of the considered hydrocarbons, so reducing the uncertainty depending on the peak area estimation of overlapped peaks and allowing an assessment of biogenic and anthropogenic hydrocarbon contributions in marine sediments. Copyright © 2009, Inderscience Publishers.