Identification of asphalt fingerprints based on ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and principal component-linear discriminant analysis

Abstract The objective of this study is to develop a method for rapidly identifying oil sources and controlling the quality of asphalt based on infrared spectroscopy. An identification method of asphalt fingerprint was established by combining the attenuated total reflectance fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and the chemometric methods. This method can be utilised to distinguish, both rapidly and correctly, between different sources of the asphalt samples, identify categories therein, and control the quality of asphalt. Further more, the discriminant function was established, which can be used for distinguishing between asphalt samples from these three oil sources with an accuracy of up to 96.2%. This research results provide a scientific basis for reasonable selection, quality monitoring, and guarantee of origin of asphalts.