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The different thermal behaviors and solubilities of large and structurally different polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) mixtures featuring coal tar pitch (CP) and naphthalene synthetic pitch (NP) samples could be read in light of their different molecular weight (MW) distribution and spectroscopic features. The number-average MW obtained by mass spectrometry for CP (417 Da) and NP (691 Da) resulted to be lower in comparison to the values evaluated by size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) (796 and 824 Da for CP and NP, respectively) because of the different response of the detector of mass spectrometry to low-and high-MW components. Hence, SEC showed to be more suitable for the analysis of PAH mixtures overlapping and covering a higher mass range in comparison to mass spectrometry. Insights into structural PAH features were given by means of spectroscopic analysis [infrared (IR), ultraviolet−visible (UV−vis), and fluorescence], allowing for the discrimination between different families of PAHs as ortho-fused PAHs and rylenes interspersed with aliphatic (mainly naphthenic) groups, mainly featuring CP and NP, respectively. Besides showing the different aromaticity and aliphatic/aromatic hydrogen distribution, the improvement of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and UV−vis absorption analysis put also in evidence the contribution of carbon-rich particle impurities and PAH aggregates in CP and NP, respectively.

Complex polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) mixtures separated from a coal tar pitch (CP) and naphthalene pitch (NP) by sequential extraction with heptane and toluene were characterized in detail by applying a multiarray analytical approach. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS), size exclusion chromatography (SEC), laser desorption ionization-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LDI-TOFMS), and thermogravimetry (TG) were used to relate the volatility and coking yield of pitch components to their solubility and molecular weight distribution. Spectroscopic analysis, including infrared (IR), ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis), and fluorescence spectroscopy, proved to be useful for measuring specific features of aromatic systems, such as the aromatic content, degree of aliphatic substitution, and size distribution of PAHs of different molecular weights. In particular, it has been shown that the spectroscopic analysis is an essential tool for characterizing very large PAH systems concentrated in the pitch toluene-insoluble fraction. This fraction constitutes a case study of very large, structurally different aromatic compounds, and it is the pitch fraction more relevant for practical applications because of its higher coking tendency and peculiar optical properties.

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