Patent ID: 8914312

Claim:
A method of selectively predicting petroleum hydrocarbon concentration in an environmental sample of unknown hydrocarbon concentration (the unknown sample) without extraction of the petroleum hydrocarbon from the environmental sample, said method comprising the steps of: (i) separately subjecting two or more samples of known hydrocarbon concentration to infrared (IR) radiation using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, at least two of the samples having different hydrocarbon concentrations; (ii) separately detecting an IR signal from the samples of known hydrocarbon concentration; (iii) analysing the IR signals using a multivariate chemometric technique to produce a training data set; (iv) generating a predictive model for hydrocarbon concentration based on the training data set; (v) subjecting the unknown sample to infrared (IR) radiation using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy; (vi) detecting an IR signal from the unknown sample; (vii) applying the predictive model to the IR signal from the unknown sample; and thereafter (viii) selectively predicting petroleum hydrocarbon concentration in the unknown sample.