Fuel quality control has gained interest in many countries owing to the potential damage of low-quality fuel to engines, the environment, and economy. Thus, the application of analytical techniques to verify quality control of fuels has become crucial. The portable micro-spectrometer in the near infrared region (microNIR) has gained credibility as a successful analytical technique in several quality control sectors. The possibility of real-time analysis using a nondestructive and reliable method is the main advantage of this methodology. In this work, chemometric models (PLS) were developed using microNIR data to determine the amount of biodiesel in diesel (LOD = 0.5wt%; LOQ = 1.8wt%; and RMSEP = 1.8wt%); sulfur in diesel (LOD = 2.4mgL; LOQ = 8.0mgL; and RMSEP = 13.2mgL); gasoline, ethanol, and methanol in C-type gasoline (LOD = 0.55wt%; LOQ = 1.84wt%; and RMSEP = 0.81wt%; LOD = 0.75wt%; LOQ = 2.5wt%; and RMSEP = 3.81wt%; and LOD = 0.85wt%; LOQ = 2.84wt%; and RMSEP = 1.80wt%); and water, methanol, and ethanol in ethanol-hydrated fuel (EHF) (LOD = 0.04wt%; LOQ = 1.29wt%; and RMSEP = 1.05wt%; LOD = 0.52wt%; LOQ = 1.73wt%; and RMSEP = 2.78wt%; and LOD = 1.22wt%; LOQ = 4.07wt%; and RMSEP = 4.41wt%). A total of 181 blends were prepared, with biodiesel and sulfur contents ranging from 0 to 100wt% and 10-500mgL, respectively. For gasoline blends, the gasoline, ethanol, and methanol contents ranged from 0.0 to 75.0wt%, 25.0-75.0wt%, and 0.0-50.0wt%, respectively. In the EHF control, the ethanol, water, and methanol contents ranged from 0.0 to 100.0wt%, 0.0-50.0wt%, and 0.0-50.0wt%, respectively. The proposed method presented high precision and accuracy in all cases, and the results showed that the microNIR technique had excellent performance in fuel quality control.
ANALYTICAL EVALUATION OF COMMERCIAL FUEL ANALYZER IN GASOLINE AND ETHANOL FUEL QUALITY CONTROL. Brazilian news media is full of examples about fuels out of the compliances and needs to control fuel quality. This work proposed an analytical validation of a commercial near infrared photometer (Xerloq, Tech Chrom Analytical Instruments, Brazil) able to identify percentage of ethanol in fuels comparing with NBR standards. Four procedures were selected: analysis of ethanol percentage in gasoline type C samples comparing with standard method ABNT 13992; analysis of ethanol percentage in fuel ethanol samples comparing with standard method ABNT 5992; linearity correlation and selectivity of standard solution analysis. Comparisons between the photometer and standards measurements were to determine the accuracy and precision of the device which presented a little variation from the norm (ER < 1.3%, sR < 0.4%). With regard to the test for linearity, Ethanol:water mixtures was analyzed with R-squared larger than 0.999 with RMSEV less than 1%. On selectivity tests, Gasoline:Ethanol:water and Methanol:Ethanol:water mixtures were measured with bias error not exceeding 5% for regulated samples. In conclusion, this fuel analyzer can be used to analyze ethanol content in Brazilian fuels with similar results comparing with classical standard volumetric and glass densimeter analysis and may indicate adulteration gasoline and ethanol samples by anomalous data.
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