FINGERPRINTING OF SOOT DUST MATERIALS USING MICRO-TLC

Abstract

Micro-planar chromatography with 45 mm developing distance involving reversed-phase HPTLC (RP18W) plates and simple n-hexane mobile phase was applied for fractionation of toluene extracts of soot dust materials. Raw samples for micro-TLC separation were derived from cold surfaces of biomass fuel and fossils-fired home heating ovens as well as trucks exhaust pipes. Discrimination of investigated objects was based on entire thin-layer chromatographic profiles and principal component analysis. Particularly, we demonstrated that such complex samples can be effectively fingerprinted and robustly classified using fluorescence (366 nm) and fluorescence quenching (254 nm) detection and multivariate data mining.

Keywords:

• air pollution
• biomass fuel
• environmental samples
• fingerprinting
• fluorescence
• group-type separation
• home heating ovens
• micro-TLC
• principal component analysis
• truck exhaust pipes

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank Filip Harasimiuk for providing selected soot samples employed in this research and for his assistance with carbon dust pulverization and sonication.

Notes

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ljlc.