Investigation on asphaltene composition in crude oil in Saudi Arabia using mass spectrometry

摘要

Asphaltenes are a complex class of components extracted from petroleum, which mainly consist of polyaromatic compounds with various functionalities. In mass spectrometry, electrospray ionization has proved to be a very useful technique to ionize macromolecules. It is a soft ionization technique which allows observation of the molecular ion and may produce multiply charged ions, effectively extending the mass range of the analyzer. In this work, the asphaltene fraction was extracted from a Saudi crude oil. The extracted fraction was injected to a tandem mass spectrometer by infusion, using either positive or negative electrospray ionization, in the mass range m/z 50 to 2000.