Assessment of soil contamination

Every year the consumption of petroleum products and biofuels especially diesel oil and biodiesel increases worldwide. In order to meet demand there has been an increase in the number of petrol stations making the installation of underground tanks inevitable. However due to small fuel leaks that occur in tanks and mechanical or human failures in unloading operations there have been many cases of soil contamination thus contributing to environmental degradation. In view of this the aim of this study was to qualitatively analyze samples of soil possibly contaminated by petroleum products (diesel oil) and biofuels (biodiesel) collected around gas stations in the city of Porto Seguro (BA) using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) associated with the pattern recognition method (PCA). The analysis showed that there are regions of the spectrum in which the absorption intensity of biodiesel is appreciable while that of diesel oil is negligibly small.