What Are the Analytical Challenges of Petroleomics?

Petroleomics has allowed scientists to go beyond basic parameters and characterise crude oil on an extraordinarily complex scale. Advances in mass spectrometry methods, techniques and technologies continue to expand the capabilities of petroleomics and unlock rich data about the chemical, physical and molecular properties of petroleum samples. While these advances have opened new doors for scientist, modern petroleomics still faces a myriad of analytical challenges.

Read on to find out more about the analytical challenges of petroleomics and how the industry is working to overcome them.  

Software to process, analyse and visualise data

Over the past decade, petroleomics has become an invaluable analytical tool used across the oil and gas industry. Its value has fuelled the development of advanced instruments and methods used to generate data and unlock incredible compositional detail from petroleum samples.

It's one thing to extract this complex data, and another to transform it into useable information. Developing software with the capabilities to process, analyse and visualise petroleomics data is one of the biggest challenges faced by the industry.

“High-resolution analytical methods used for the analysis of petroleum substances yield complex data matrices that require special handling, visualisation, and statistical analyses,” reads the ‘Petroleomics: Tools, Challenges, and Developments’ report published in the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry. “Typical approaches are Kendrick mass defect (KMD) analysis, as well as determinations of elemental composition and aromaticity.”

Data analysis tools struggling to keep up the pace

Remy Gavard, a former PhD student at the University of Warwick, explored the challenges of petroleomics in detail in a thesis sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, British Mass Spectrometry Society and Royal Society of Chemistry. Gavard asserts that while Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry (FTICR MS) delivers impressive power and accuracy, its ability to identify a huge number of components in complex chemical samples poses a major challenge for data analysis.

“The data analysis tools necessary struggle to keep pace with advancing instrument capabilities and the ever-increasing quantities of data generated,” writes Gavard in his thesis titled 'Addressing the Challenges of Petroleomics Data'.

The analytical challenges of petroleomics will be a major focus at the upcoming PEFTEC conference. Scheduled for late November, the two-day event will bring together industry experts from around the world. As well as spotlighting the analytical challenges faced by the petroleomics sector, a series of keynote lectures, presentations and panel discussions will address other trending topics relevant to the petroleum, petrochemical, chemical and refining industries.