Analysis of TPH (Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon) in Soil

Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH) are produced in the refining process of crude oil and their main components are hydrocarbons but the composition get different depending on the type of oils. They are used to determine which oils such as kerosene, diesel or lubricating oil caused the contamination.
To reduce soil contamination, TPH analysis has been added to the risk assessment substances to evaluate the level of hazardous materials and it’s getting important for both humans and the environment. Although there are some kind of specific additives used to identify which oils have caused the contamination, it’s hard to identify the oil types from soils due to decomposition by multiple factors in the soil.
However, the TPH, which mainly composes petroleum products, remains in the soil such a long time, it is easy to analyze the TPH pattern of petroleum products to determine which types of oil contaminated the soil.
In this study, the analysis of TPH pattern in petroleum products and TPH analysis in soil samples with YL6500 GC were conducted according to the Soil Contamination Process Test Standard ES 07552.1b method specified by the National Institute of Environmental Research.