Marine organic matter elemental analysis

Marine chemists have had limited success in characterizing the molecular structure of organic matter, particularly for the dissolved compounds. Chemical analysis usually starts with the isolation of POM from DOM using a filter with a 0.2-p,m pore size. This is generally followed by elemental analysis. More sophisticated approaches involve structural analysis, but this is usually limited to detection of functional groups or broad classes of compounds. 

The OM appears to be essentially of marine planktonic origin, as deduced from (i) elemental analysis (the atomic ratios 0/C and H/C values of 0.15 and 1.29 % in HA and 0.40 and 1.55% in FA, respectively, indicate that these humic compounds originated from marine aliphatic organic matter) (ii) FTIR analysis of humic materials (Fig. 2. spectra obtained for HA show these humics are rich with aliphatic stmetures which is... 

Rock-Eval pyrolysis (Espitalie et al., 1977) was applied to immature ancient marine sediments by Herbin and Deroo (1979) and to recent marine sediments by Debyser and Gadel (1981). This technique results in information similar to elemental analysis, but the procedure is much faster, cheaper, and easier. However, it seems necessary to modify this method for use in recent sediments, where organic matter is thermally labile and rich in oxygen. This problem is currently under investigation at the Institut Francais du Petrole. 

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