Determination of 13 C/12 C isotopic ratio in different petroleum oils and natural gases

In this work , the 13 C-contents of petroleum oil collected from oil fields representing the major oil provinces in Egypt were determined. As the isotopic composition of petroleum needs to be determined very precisely therefore investigation were carried out for the development of reliable quantitative combustion technique for sample preparation prior to mass spectrometric measurements. In the first part of this work a comparison was done between 2 combustion techniques, a modified circulation apparatus and the rapid ampoule technique. The isotopic analysis showed that both methods could be used for sample preparation without a significant difference in the results. The ampoule technique is more time advantageous than the circulating apparatus, and the number of samples which could be processed is much greater when using the ampoule technique without the need for complicated experimental set ups