Identification of individual thiophene‐, indane‐, tetralin‐, cyclohexane‐, and adamantane‐type carboxylic acids in composite tailings pore water from Alberta oil sands

RATIONALE: Naphthenic acids (NAs) accumulate in oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) as a result of the water-based extraction processes, and represent one of the toxic fractions in OSPW. They exist as a complex mixture and so the development of an analytical method to characterize and quantify individual acids has been an on-going challenge. The multidimensional separation technique of two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC × GC) has the …