2016 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Development of intramolecular isotope analysis for understanding the origin of natural gas hydrocarbons
| Project/Area Number |
15K17774
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Institute of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
ジルベルト アレキシー 東京工業大学, 理学院, 特任助教 (20726955)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | Isotope / Natural gas / Hydrocarbons |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Our goal was to refine our understanding of natural gas sources ans sinks in natural geological settings.
We developed a method for position-specific 13C isotope analysis of propane and butane from natural gas. The first part of the project consisted in developing the method and calibrating it with labelled 13C compounds (Gilbert et al 2016).
We then applied the method to natural gas of various origins: we synthesized natural gas in the lab by thermal cracking of oil components; we sampled natural gas from a continental hydrothermal system and several gases of thermogenic origin.
We showed that our method is able to distinguish different processes such as biological vs non-biological production, thermal vs biological degradation (Suda, Gilbert et al, 2017).
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