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No, Not That PAH!
09/13/2010
| Catherine Cramer,
(OCEAN)
Tags: chemical oceanography, case study
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Part of creating a Case Study about chemical oceanographer Rick Keil is understanding what his research is all about. And reading about his research projects entails encountering things like acronyms. As in "The lab also has the capability to investigate other compound types including simple sugars, organic acids, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and alkanes." So what are "PAHs"?
Wikipedia tells me, "Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), also known as poly-aromatic hydrocarbons or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons are potent atmospheric pollutants that consist of fused aromatic rings and do not contain heteroatoms or carry substituents.[1] Napthalene is the simplest example of a PAH. PAHs occur in oil, coal, and tar deposits, and are produced as byproducts of fuel burning (whether fossil fuel or biomass). As a pollutant, they are of concern because some compounds have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic. PAHs are also found in foods. Studies have shown that most food intake of PAHs comes from cereals, oils and fats. Smaller intakes come from vegetables and cooked meats.[2][3][4]"
Which makes sense, considering that "the goal of Rick’s lab is to understand the factors that control organic matter preservation in marine and freshwater systems, with a focus on mechanisms that control the extent to which bacteria degrade different forms of organic matter." (BTW, that's my writing, not Wikipedia!)
(Photo: Crystal structure of a hexa-t-butyl derivatized hexa-peri-hexabenzo[bc,ef,hi,kl,no,qr]coronene, reported by Müllen and coworkers in Chem. Eur. J., 2000, 1834-1839. The t-butyl groups make this compound soluble in common solvents such as hexane, in which the unsubstituted PAH is insoluble.)
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![Crystal structure of a hexa-t-butyl derivatized hexa-peri-hexabenzo[bc,ef,hi,kl,no,qr]coronene](../../images/coseenet/220px-Hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene_ChemEurJ_2000_1834_commons1.jpg)
