Determination of the Light Hydrocarbons in Sediment Porewater from the Black Sea by Gas Chromatography (GC)

Abstract

A sensitive and selective gas chromatographic (GC) method has been developed for the determination of dissolved methane, ethane, propane butane, pentane and hexane in seawater from sediment pores. For this purpose, a headspace method was developed. The dissolved methane concentrations in the liquid phase were calculated using Henry’s Law and in the gas phase using a partial pressure measurement. The method requires minimal sample preparation and provides low ng/L detection limits. The samples were collected from Black Sea bottom sediment porewaters.

Keywords:

• Black Sea
• gas chromatography (GC)
• headspace
• methane
• sediment porewaters

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministery of Research and Innovation, CCCDI – UEFISCDI by project number PN-III-P1-1.2-PCCDI-2017-0178/24PCCDI ⁄2018 within PNCDI III.