Sources of natural hydrocarbons in the marine environment

Sources of natural hydrocarbons in the marine environment 3.1.1. Saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons N-alkanes. Typical compound n-heptadecane n-C,7 structure  

AT-alkanes are dominant constituents of natural hydrocarbons in the marine environment and their ease of analysis by gas—liquid chromatography explains that this class is relative well documented. 

N-alkanes from phytoplankton Analysis of the n-alkanes from phytoplankton from pure cultures or net samples from natural sea waters generally indicate the predominance of one compound (n-Cis or n-Ci7) over a normal alkane distribution, usually at low level, from about C14 to 032 0 without predominance of individual alkanes. Predominant n-alkanes in marine and fresh-water phytoplankton species are indicated in Table II. 

N-alkanes from benthic and pelagic algae Among the saturated hydrocarbons, n-Cis predominates in the brown and n-Ci7 in the red algae over a lower secondary maximum in the C20 to C30 range (Table III). 

N-alkanes from bacteria The hydrocarbons from photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic bacteria range in chain length from C13 to C31. The major n-alkane is found in the range C17—C20 (Table IV) for long-chain alkanes the amounts of odd-numbered homologues and the even-numbered ones are about equzd. 

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SOURCES OF NATURAL HYDROCARBONS IN THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT SOME PROCESSES CONTROLLING THEIR DISTRIBUTION (Fig. 2)... 

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