I need a good idea about the analysis PAHs in sediment for PhD thesis. There is a 120 sediment samples of Persian Gulf. They are offshore samples. I wonder what is the best that I could run with this samples as a PhD thesis. I know somehow about GIS and RS. Any idea about joining the laboratory analysis with this technique? We don't have any samples of fauna.
The samples can be extracted three times with 30 mL of (1:1 v/v) hexane/dichloromethane for 20 min using ultra-sonication (Liu et al., 2009).
Dear Karishma
My problem is not how to analysis the samples. I need a idea for my thesis to intrprate the data or may be new analysis.
After adequate extraction and SPE clean-up; an UHPLC (LC) separation with fluorescence detector is the easiest way to make an analysis of PAH even at ppb level.
Try to contact Dr. Ali Douabul, the marine chemistry expert of the Gulf. he is the Head of the Marine Environmental Chemistry department of the Marine Science Center @ University of Basra, Iraq
If you are good with GIS, you can plot the PAH concentrations as a function of depth, lat and long. Then, you can use your GIS program to create 3D contour maps of the concentrations.
I would use the Lat, long and depth as 3 factors in your data analysis. This would create a function like F(lat, long, depth) = conc of PAHs. This will be a multiple linear regression. It will be similar to the analysis you use on a Response Surface. You should do this to make sure the GIS software uses the correct interpolation method. Once you have this data, you can go back, and potentially find where the highest concentrations of PAH are.
You can use these ideas to determine potential sources of the PAHs.
If you have concentrations of individual molecules or classes of PAHs, you can also use multivariate statistics in the same way you would analyze for community structure. The form of the data is the same as if it were species and abundance at each sample location.
To interpret results of your analysis there are many ways including statistical techniques. You can do co-variance analysis of the data set to see the variance of source dimension. Moreover principal component analysis can be performed along with multiple linear regression for source identification and to know the source contribution.
there is a lot of papers for sediment preparation for GC/MS measurement.
just Google it and you will find many.
but the important is to find good internal standard and start your tests.
its not hard but you need to practice it.
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