Detection of Benzene and Alkylated Benzene Derivatives in Fuel Contaminated Environments

Reported herein is the sensitive and selective detection of benzene and alkylated benzene derivatives as well as the practical application of this system in the detection of fuel contaminated environments following a March 2015 tanker truck crash at the Bourne Rotary in Bourne, Massachusetts. This detection method relies on the ability of cyclodextrin to promote proximity-induced fluorescence modulation of a high quantum yield fluorophore, which led to unique modulation responses for each cyclodextrin-analyte-fluorophore combination investigated. The measured changes in fluorescence emission were used to generate arrays using linear discriminant analysis to generate unique pattern identifiers for each combination. The method was successful in detecting ppm levels of analytes with 100% success in differentiating analytes in purified buffer solution and 100% success in differentiating between analytes in water samples from three collection locations related to the crash site: downstream, upstream, and directly from the drainage pipe. Notably, this method was successful in generating well-separated signals for structural isomers of xylene (ortho, meta, para) which is difficult without specialized mass spectrometry-based techniques. The high selectivity, sensitivity, and broad applicability of this method have significant potential in the detection of aromatic analytes in a wide range of complex environments.