[hubbcut]

Hi! I'm a microbiology major currently working on my thesis. I'm conducting a study on how fungal isolates can degrade crude oil. There are a lot of studies that mention using gravimetric analysis to quantify the efficiency of degradation, however, they don't outline how to do this procedure step-by-step. I haven't step foot in a chemistry lab in so long, and am not familiar with how to do it for this particular study. Please help outline how to do this 😅 are there any reagents I need? What glassware will I need?

[Borek]

I am drawing a blank on this one.

Is it the case of degradation products being gaseous and leaving the sample? Then it would be probably a matter of weighing it several times during the process (with some tricks to account for evaporation, crude oil contains plenty of volatile compounds).

[hubbcut]

I am drawing a blank on this one.

Is it the case of degradation products being gaseous and leaving the sample? Then it would be probably a matter of weighing it several times during the process (with some tricks to account for evaporation, crude oil contains plenty of volatile compounds).

In this case, I am following the methods in this paper (attached the file here). I'm drawing a blank on how to carry out this procedure, as I'm not sure what glassware and steps are involved in detail.

[rjb]

I am drawing a blank on this one.

Is it the case of degradation products being gaseous and leaving the sample? Then it would be probably a matter of weighing it several times during the process (with some tricks to account for evaporation, crude oil contains plenty of volatile compounds).

In this case, I am following the methods in this paper (attached the file here). I'm drawing a blank on how to carry out this procedure, as I'm not sure what glassware and steps are involved in detail.

Try this for size...

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-08/documents/method_1664b_2010.pdf

Equipment from page 7 onwards and process from pg 19 onwards.
You're attempting a version of the so-called HEM process, so you don't have to do anything related to the SGT-HEM. The main different I can see from the method used by the paper's author and EPA1664 is that the solvent was evaporated off using a rotary evaporator set to 60C (hopefully not 600C!).

Good Luck

R