Studying ultra-complex crude oil mixtures by using High Field Asymmetric Waveform Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS) coupled to an ESI-LTQ-Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer

High Field Asymmetric Waveform Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS) was coupled directly to an LTQ Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer to analyze a nitrogen rich crude oil. Analyzing crude oil is extremely difficult due to the complexity as up to 100,000 different components can be present. Therefore, simplification of crude oil increases the information content because discrimination and suppression effects are reduced. Here, first results are presented that show that FAIMS can be an important tool for the simplification of complex mixtures. Additionally, the results show that FAIMS is an excellent tool that allows not only a simplification of such complex mixtures but also shows the separation of isomeric compounds that have the same elemental composition but different structure and conformation