Analysis of Petroleum Products in Fire Debris Residues by Gas Chromatography: A Literature Review

Abstract

This review gives a brief overview of developments in the analysis of petroleum products (PP) in fire debris residues (FDR) by gas chromatography (GC). The review covers different aspects of analysis such as the substrates involved, isolation procedures, column and mobile phase used, and subsequent detection in tabular form. This paper covers detection of PP such as petrol, kerosene, and diesel in various types’ of samples of interest to fire debris analysts. Solid phase microextraction is most frequently used along with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for the extraction and identification of PP from FDR. Chemometric tools should be used to improve the significance and reliability of results obtained from the analysis of FDR. However, the potential utility of portable GC-MS in fire debris analysis cannot be ignored, and its proper development and validation is required before using it for this purpose.

Keywords

• forensic science
• forensic chemistry
• fire debris analysis
• petroleum products
• arson
• gas chromatography-mass spectrometry