A Comprehensive Review on the Excitation-Emission Matrix Fluorescence Spectroscopic Characterization of Petroleum-Containing Substances: Principles, Methods, and Applications

Abstract

Petroleum-containing substance (PCS) is a general term used for petroleum and its derivatives. A comprehensive characterization of PCSs is crucial for resource exploitation, economic development and environmental protection. Fluorescence spectroscopy, especially excitation-emission matrix fluorescence (EEMF) spectroscopy, has been proved to be a powerful tool to characterize PCSs since its remarkable sensitivity, selectivity, simplicity and high efficiency. However, there is a lack of systematic review focusing on this field in the literature. This paper reviews the fundamental principles and measurements of EEMF for characterizing PCSs, and makes a systematic introduction to various information mining methods including basic peak information extraction, spectral parameterization and some commonly used chemometric methods. In addition, recent advances in applying EEMF to characterize PCSs during the whole life-cycle process of petroleum are also revisited. Furthermore, the current limitations of EEMF in the measurement and characterization of PCSs are discussed and corresponding solutions are provided. For promoting the future development of this field, the urgent need to build a relatively complete EEMF fingerprint library to trace PCSs, not only pollutants but also crude oil and petroleum products, is proposed. Finally, the extensions of EEMF to high-dimensional chemometrics and deep learning are prospected, with the expectation of solving more complex systems and problems.

Keywords:

• Chemometrics
• excitation-emission matrix fluorescence
• petrochemical pollution traceability
• petroleum-containing substances
• polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 32001790 and 32272409); the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (Grant No. 2022CFB161); and the Open Project Program of State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Pollution Control (Grant No. PPC2020012), CNPC Research Institute of Safety and Environmental Technology.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 32001790 and 32272409); the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (Grant No. 2022CFB161); and the Open Project Program of State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Pollution Control (Grant No. PPC2020012), CNPC Research Institute of Safety and Environmental Technology.