Influence of thermal environment in fire on the identification of gasoline combustion residues

Recent advances in fire investigation have engendered significant interest in fire debris analysis. Many factors in fire scenes, however, may interfere with the identification of ignitable liquid residues (ILRs). Generally, all ILRs suffer unavoidably from thermal destruction in fires. In contrast to weathering, the thermal effects on ILRs involve evaporation, thermal degradation and other chemical reactions. In order to study the influence of the thermal environment in fire scenes on the stability of target compounds for ILRs identification, gasoline combustion residues were reheated at different temperatures and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) systematically. The results showed that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and indanes were more susceptible to thermal destruction, and could not be detected effectively after heating. On the other hand, alkylbenzenes and condensed ring aromatics were comparatively more stable. When the temperature rose to 600 °C, almost all the target compounds were lost after reheating again for 2 min. The research provides an important reference for gasoline combustion residues identification, and care should be taken on the interpretation of results due to the inevitable thermal damage to ILRs in fires.