Determination of Hydrocarbon Group-Type of Diesel Fuels by Gas Chromatography with Vacuum Ultraviolet Detection

Abstract

A GC-vacuum ultraviolet (UV) method to perform group-type separations of diesel range fuels was developed. The method relies on an ionic liquid column to separate diesel samples into saturates, mono-, di-, and polyaromatics by gas chromatography, with selective detection via vacuum UV absorption spectroscopy. Vacuum UV detection was necessary to solve a coelution between saturates and monoaromatics. The method was used to measure group-type composition of 10 oilsands-derived Synfuel light diesel samples, 3 Syncrude light gas oils, and 1 quality control sample. The gas chromatography (GC)-vacuum UV results for the Synfuel samples were similar (absolute % error of 0.8) to historical results from the supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) analysis. For the light gas oils, discrepancies were noted between SFC results and GC-vacuum UV results; however, these samples are known to be challenging to quantify by SFC-flame ionization detector (FID) due to incomplete resolution between the saturate/monoaromatic and/or monoaromatic/diaromatic group types when applied to samples heavier than diesel (i.e., having a larger fraction of higher molecular weight species). The quality control sample also performed well when comparing both methods (absolute % error of 0.2) and the results agreed within error for saturates, mono- and polyaromatics.

Analysis of terpenes and turpentines using gas chromatography with vacuum ultraviolet detection

“…Particularly, due to its aromatic structure, p ‐isopropyltoluene ( p ‐cymene) exhibits a strong absorption in the range of 170–200 nm. Such sharp and intense absorption features for aromatic species have been reported previously in work related to petroleum product analysis .…”

Gas Fermentation—A Flexible Platform for Commercial Scale Production of Low-Carbon-Fuels and Chemicals from Waste and Renewable Feedstocks

“…However, syngas derived from biomass has typically a lower H 2 :CO ratio (van der Drift et al, 2001 ; Datar et al, 2004 ; Boerrigter and Rauch, 2005 ; Boateng et al, 2007 ; Piccolo and Bezzo, 2009 ; Zheng et al, 2016 ), often requiring an extra step of water-gas shift reaction (National Energy Technology Laboratory, 2013 ) at the expense of CO to adjust the H 2 :CO for FTP. Although chemical processes are generally considered faster than biological approaches, the latter allow near complete conversion efficiencies due to the irreversible nature of biological reactions (Klasson et al, 1991 , 1992 ). Furthermore, the high enzymatic specificities of biological conversions also result in higher product selectivity with the formation of fewer by-products.…”

Generating highly specific spectra and identifying thermal decomposition products via Gas Chromatography / Vacuum Ultraviolet Spectroscopy (GC/VUV): Application to nitrate ester explosives

“…22 Spectral filters were created using the VUVision software to enhance the chromatographic signal by averaging the absorption in specified wavelength ranges; much in the same way as with extracted ion chromatograms in mass spectrometry. 9,12 All four of the nitrate ester decomposition VUV spectra absorbed light in the wavelength ranges 128-129 nm; therefore, a spectral filter was created that averages the absorbances in this wavelength range to improve the detection limits of nitroglycerine. A spectral filter from 175-205 nm improved the detection of aromatic double base-smokeless powder components such as diphenylamine, ethyl centralite, and di-n-butyl phthalate (Figure 7).…”

“…3,5,[7][8] This originates from the additive nature of the Beer Lambert Law where the total absorption is a linear combination of each, non-interacting species. [2][3][4][5][9][10] To date, GC/VUV has been used to analyse drugs, 2,11 fatty acid methyl esters, 9 diesel fuel, 3,[6][7]10 hydrocarbons, 12 and perfume and essential oil 4,13 from 125 to 230 nm.…”