Multicomponent determination of a polyaromatic hydrocarbon mixture by direct fluorescence measurements

This study deals with an analysis of a mixture of five polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with the aim of avoiding any preliminary treatment of the sample such as extraction or concentration, which are time-consuming procedures. To reach this goal we studied a direct multicomponent determination of the PAHs in mixture by applying principal-component analysis and principal-component regression techniques, which are briefly explained in this work. After a calibration procedure we were able to analyze each PAH of the mixture by a simple and direct fluorescence measurement. Moreover, the quantitative results obtained were assessed on some test samples. The results obtained and the further developments of this study will be also discussed.