The Major Constituents of Natural Gas

The major constituent of natural gas is methane however, other gaseous hydrocarbons are also present. One way to identify other components is to dissolve some natural gas in a solvent and examine the ¹H NMR spectrum. The spectrum in the figure below was acquired on a sample prepared by bubbling natural gas through benzene-d₆ for several minutes. The spectrum clearly shows the presence of methane, ethane, propane and water. The spectrum also indicated other impurities at much lower levels (not shown in the figure).