Fluorescence spectra of oil after it contacts with aquatic environment

The main task for natural marine environment protection is to prevent the inflow of various contaminants including oil substances and the real challenge is the ability to rapidly detect these pollutants. Moreover important is to find the source or the maker of the oil spill. In this paper, we consider fundamental physical aspects in the area of possibility of monitoring the natural marine ecosystem based on fluorescence spectroscopy. We utilize the fluorescence ability of numerous oil components – mainly polycyclic hydrocarbons. The paper concerns the spectrofluorimetric characterization of oils have been in use during exploitation of the marine fleet, i.e. lubricate oil, fuels, transformer and hydraulic oils as well as crude oils or their residues. Every kind of oil has a chance to enter the marine environment, especially in a case of ship emergency or after collision with other vessel ore shoreline structure as well as when ship enters the stranding. After discharge of oil, some of oil components are dissolved in the water, bacteria or photochemical reactions, which results in transformation of composition of oil, degrade some. Fluorescence spectrometer Perkin Elmer LS55 was applied to obtain the fluorescence spectra using different excitation wavelength in the range from 240 nm to 500 nm. We discuss the changes of the shapes of excitationemission spectra (EEMs) of various types of oil and the EEMs spectra after contact of oil with seawater as an oil-inwater emulsion, which is the most frequent form of oil in the water column. Significant changes in the shape of spectra and displacement of the peaks are observed.