A combination of steady-state fluorescence, fluorescence lifetime measurements and the determination of time-resolved emission spectra were employed to characterize asphaltene toluene solutions. Lifetime measurements were shown to be insensitive to the source of asphaltene or the alkane solvent from which asphaltene was precipitated. This insensitivity suggests that either the composition of Athabasca and Cold Lake asphaltene is very similar or that the fluorescence behavior is dominated by the same sub-set of fluorophores for the different samples. These results highlight the limitations in using fluorescence to characterize asphaltene solutions. Different dependencies were observed for the average lifetimes with the asphaltene concentration when measured at two different emission wavelengths (420 nm and 520 nm). This result suggests that different fluorophores underwent diverse interactions with other asphaltene molecules as the asphaltene concentration was raised, suggesting that models for asphaltene aggregation need to include molecular diversity.
The effect of binding Tb(3+) to sodium taurocholate aggregates containing polyaromatic hydrocarbon guests was examined using pyrene and 1-ethylnaphthalene as guests that bind to the primary aggregate, and 1-naphthyl-1-ethanol as a secondary aggregate guest. Time-resolved fluorescence quenching studies were used to study the binding site properties, while laser flash photolysis quenching studies provided information on the dynamics of the guest-aggregate system. Both the primary and secondary aggregate binding sites became more compact in the presence of bound Tb(3+), while only the primary aggregate became more accessible to anionic molecules. The binding dynamics for the guest-primary aggregate system became faster when Tb(3+) was bound to the aggregate. In contrast, for the guest-secondary aggregate the presence of Tb(3+) resulted in a small decrease in the dissociation rate constant. The influence of bound Tb(3+) on the primary and secondary bile salt aggregates is significantly different, which affects how these aggregates can be used as supramolecular host systems to modify guest reactivity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.