Tracking Oil Spills: A Fresh Take on Measuring Emulsified Oil

You're standing on the beach, looking out at the sea. You spot an oil spill, and your first thought isn't just, "Yikes! " but also, "How much oil is that? " This is where a clever combo of fluorescence spectroscopy and chemometrics comes in. Scientists took two types of emulsified oil and measured their fluorescence using a fancy spectrometer. They then broke down these measurements using a technique called PARAFAC, pulling out key excitation wavelengths. Next, they calculated what's called a "three-band fluorescence index" (TBFI) at these wavelengths and picked the best emission bands. Finally, they crunched the numbers with something called partial least squares regression (PLSR) to create a model for predicting oil concentration. Compared to other methods, their TBFI-PLSR model gave the most accurate results. For gasoline and diesel, the model’s accuracy was off the charts, with coefficients of determination around 0. 93 and error rates as low as 3. 67%.