Analysis of Hydrocarbons Using PCI-GC-MS

Interest in hydrocarbon-producing microalgae is growing in the field of renewable energy development. Research is being performed into obtaining petrochemical raw material from the hydrocarbons produced by microalgae, and mass spectrometry is used in identification of these products. The ion-molecule reactions that occur with positive chemical ionization (PCI) tend to produce protonated molecules and dehydride molecules, from which information about molecular mass is easier to obtain compared to the EI method.
In this article, we describe a case example of using PCI-GC-MS to measure hydrocarbons obtained from the catalytic decomposition of squalane, a compound obtained from microalgae.