%0 Journal Article
%T Potential of NMR Spectroscopy in the Characterization of Nonconventional Oils
%A Abdul Majid
%A Indu Pihillagawa
%J Journal of Fuels
%D 2014
%R 10.1155/2014/390261
%X NMR spectroscopy was applied for the characterization of two biomass based pyrolysis oil samples. The samples were extracted in various solvents and the extracts were investigated by both 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Subsequent evaluation of the integrated analytical data revealed chemical information regarding semiquantitative estimation of various functional groups. This information could not have been obtained readily from the individual spectroscopic techniques. Semiquantitative estimation of the various functional groups allowed a comparison of the extraction efficiency of these groups in various solvents. The method is based on the premise that although the number of individual molecular species in pyrolysis oil liquid is large, most of these species are composed of a limited number of functional groups. The methodology provided information on the concentration of chemical functionalities that are potentially useful for synthetic modifications and may help to guide the use of pyrolysis oil as a chemical feedstock. The approach described is expected to be generally applicable to complex mixture of hydrocarbon oils such as bio-oils, oil sands bitumen, and coal pyrolysis oils. 1. Introduction Due to the extremely complex nature of nonconventional oils such as bio-oils, oil sands bitumen, and coal pyrolysis oils, structural and compositional analysis of these oils poses a formidable challenge to analytical chemists. A detailed analysis requires careful, laborious combination and integration of voluminous chromatographic and spectroscopic data. Complete analysis of all components of a complex oil containing nonvolatile and/or highly polar or reactive components is generally not within the reach of current analytical methodologies. Although in recent years impressive advances have been made with the physical coupling of two or more chromatographic and/or spectroscopic techniques, such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS), liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS), and gas chromatography-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (GC/FTIR), true integration of the analytical data from these methods is too complex and laborious and is rarely even attempted. Recently, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has emerged as a very powerful and versatile tool for characterization [1¨C3]. In contrast to most used characterization methods such as chromatography and mass spectroscopy, NMR allows the investigations in solids as well as in solution. Also, over the last few decades, NMR hardware, computer technology, and experimental design have
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jfu/2014/390261/