High efficiency separations as new environmental forensics tools for water monitoring around oil sands and hydraulic fracturing activity

在阿尔伯塔，公众担心油砂工艺水（OSPW）泄漏到阿萨巴斯卡河中，加拿大西部广泛的水力压裂（水力压裂）活动使许多利益相关者担心其饮用水的安全和质量。不幸的是，用于检测环境样品中的OSPW污染物或用于表征压裂流体组分的痕量分析方法仍处于起步阶段，并且很明显，通过当今的分析方法进行的水监测不能提供关于水的安全性的结论性答案。面临的挑战是，OSPW和压裂液含有未解决的化学品的超级复杂的混合物。典型的尾矿池可能含有超过100万种不同的化学物质，但今天最好的分析方法不能解决这些超过5000大组。更复杂的是，已知OSPW中的许多相同化学物质会自然进入阿萨巴斯卡河，因为地下水和雨水会渗透到河流和小溪岸边的油砂沉积物中。尽管公开了一长串可能存在于压裂液中的化学物质，但工业混合物中的许多其他化学物质被认为是专有的，迄今为止，还没有同行评审的报告试图通过非目标方法来表征这些水样中有机物的复杂混合物。需要分析方法，可以准确地表征这些化学品，同时区分自然和工业来源。使用来自沃茨公司的“演示”超临界流体色谱仪（SFC），并通过长色谱柱（1 m）将其连接到高分辨率Orbitrap质谱仪，证明了高效分离可用于油砂开发周围的水样剖面。我们还通过Orbitrap质谱表征了压裂液中数千种新物种，但需要SFC系统来分离HPLC无法分离的高度水溶性有机化学品。我们与证监会的演示期已于2013年结束，我们无法继续这项工作。我们要求一个新的证监会为加拿大水监测开发重要的环境法医工具。

In Alberta there is public concern that oil sands process water (OSPW) is leaking into the Athabasca River, and widespread hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activity in Western Canada has many stakeholders concerned about the security and quality of their drinking water. Unfortunately, trace analytical methods for detecting OSPW contaminants in environmental samples, or for characterizing fracking-fluid components are still in their infancy, and it is clear that water monitoring by today's analytical methods cannot provide conclusive answers about the safety of water. The challenge is that OSPW and fracking-fluids contain supercomplex mixtures of unresolved chemicals. Typical tailings ponds likely contain more than 1 million distinct chemicals, but today's best analytical methods cannot resolve these beyond 5000 broad groups. Further complicating things is that many of the same chemicals in OSPW are known to enter the Athabasca River naturally, because groundwater and rain permeate through oil-sands deposits at the banks of rivers and streams.Although long-lists of chemicals that may be in fracking-fluids are publicly available, many other chemicals in the industrial mixtures are considered proprietary, and to date no peer-reviewed reports have attempted to characterize the complex mixtures of organics in these water samples by non-targeted methods. Analytical methods are needed that can accurately characterize these chemicals while simultaneously differentiating between natural and industrial sources. Using a "demo" supercritical fluid chromatograph (SFC) from Waters Corporation, and by linking this to a ultrahigh resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometer through a long chromatographic column (1 m), highly efficient separations were demonstrated that can be used to profile water samples around oil sands development. We have also characterized thousands of novel species in fracking-fluid by Orbitrap mass spectrometry, but require an SFC system to separate the highly water soluble organic chemicals that cannot be separated by HPLC. Our demo period with the SFC ended in 2013 and we are unable to continue this work. We request a new SFC to develop important environmental forensic tools for Canadian water monitoring.