Charge-tagged reagents for the selective analysis of functionalized molecules in petroleum

即使是石油中非常少量的不需要的物质也会引起气味、变色或炼油厂污染。这些材料可以自然产生，也可以作为加工过程中的添加剂，了解它们是什么对于提供解决方案至关重要。这个提议包括使用McIndoe实验室开发的带电荷标记的化合物，并将它们应用于帝国石油公司在该领域遇到的特殊问题。标记的材料配备了选择性反应官能团，可以提取出感兴趣的特定化合物，并“点亮”它们进行质谱分析。这种方法可以比作大海捞针，但只有针是可见的-因此我们的任务相应地更容易。污染物的识别将导致采取措施避免它们的引入或设计在加工过程中去除天然化合物的方法。由于石油工业的规模，任何这样的小改进都可以带来可观的节省和更清洁的产品。

Even very small amounts of unwanted material in petroleum can cause odor, discoloration or refinery fouling. Such materials can occur naturally or as additives during processing, and knowing what they are is crucial to providing solutions. This proposal involves using charge-tagged compounds developed in the McIndoe lab and applying them to particular problems in this area experienced by Imperial Oil. The tagged materials are equipped with selectively reactive functional groups that will pluck out particular compounds of interest and "light them up" for mass spectrometric analysis. The approach can be likened to looking for a needle in a haystack, but where only the needles are visible - our task is hence correspondingly easier. Identification of contaminants will lead to measures taken to avoid their introduction or to design methods to remove naturally-occurring compounds during processing. Because of the scale of the oil industry, any such small improvements can lead to considerable savings and cleaner products.