Photocatalytic Degradation-Excitation-Emission Matrix Fluorescence for Increasing the Selectivity of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Analyses

The application of photocatalysis enhancement to calibration of fluorescence excitation-emission matrixes (EEMs) with parallel factor (PARAFAC) analysis is described. In this study, three- and four-way PARAFAC analysis was employed to extract the fluorescent speciesʹ spectra from overlapping EEMs. Time-dependent photocatalysis degradation of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was employed to create an additional dimension for analysis. The consequent four-dimension degradation-EEM data cubes have greater selectivity for each PAH than do three-dimension EEM data cubes alone. On a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 being completely collinear spectra and 1 being orthogonal spectra, including the time-dependent measurements increased the selectivity an average of 21%, from 0.73 to 0.87.