Diamondoid Characterization in Condensate by Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography with Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry: The Junggar Basin of Northwest China

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Shuifu Li²  Shouzhi Hu²  Jian Cao¹  Ming Wu¹ 

[1] School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China; E-Mail:;Key Laboratory of Tectonics and Petroleum Resources (China University of Geosciences), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430074, China; E-Mails:

关键词: diamondoid;    oil maturity;    biomarker;    condensate;    GC×GC-TOFMS;    Junggar Basin;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms130911399

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Diamondoids in crude oil are useful for assessing the maturity of oil in high maturation. However, they are very difficult to separate and accurately quantify by conventional geochemical methods due to their low abundance in oil. In this paper, we use comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS) to study the compounds in condensates from the Junggar Basin of northwest China and address their geological and geochemical applications. GC×GC-TOFMS improves the resolution and separation efficiency of the compounds. It not only separates the compounds that coelute in conventional GC-MS (e.g., 4, 8-dimethyl-diamantane and trimethyl-diamantane) but also allows the identification of compounds that were not previously detected (e.g., trimethyl-diamantane (15A)). A reversed-phase column system improves the separation capabilities over the normal phase column system. The diamondoid indexes indicate that a representative condensate from Well DX 10 is highly mature with equivalent Ro being approximately 1.5%.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.