Diesel Fuel Analysis by GC−FIMS:  Aromatics, n-Paraffins, and Isoparaffins

Abstract

A reliable characterization method giving a detailed hydrocarbon composition profile for transportation fuels is an important part of any process that optimizes fuel reformulation and engine design to reduce regulated emissions. This study describes the development of a modified gas chromatography field ionization mass spectrometry (GC-FIMS) method for detailed hydrocarbon type determination of diesel fuel. Diesel fuels were analyzed by GC-FIMS, and the calculated hydrocarbon type composition profile was compared with that determined by other standard techniques. Results for total saturates, total aromatics, monoaromatics, and polyaromatics contents correlated well. Selected ion chromatograms demonstrated the separation of isoparaffins and normal paraffins in typical diesel fuels. The GC-FIMS method produced results for isoparaffin, normal paraffin, and cycloparaffin contents that did not require sample pretreatment to separate saturates and aromatics fractions. Analysis of a gasoline sample showed excellent agreement between GC-FIMS and detailed hydrocarbon analysis or PIONA for total cycloparaffin content, and reasonable agreement for iso-and normal paraffin contents. The normal paraffin contents of selected diesel blends measured by GC-FIMS correlated well with that measured by other methods. Experiments with internal standardization verified the accuracy of the GC-FIMS method for selected hydrocarbon isomers.

Development of an Experimental Database and Kinetic Models for Surrogate Diesel Fuels

“…Commercial diesel fuels are complex blends of several hundreds of individual species [2][3][4]. The primary chemical and physical property ranges of North American (U.S. and Canada) diesel fuels are given in Table 1 [5,6].…”

Mapping and quantifying isomer sets of hydrocarbons ( ≥ C<sub>12</sub>) in diesel exhaust, lubricating oil and diesel fuel samples using GC × GC-ToF-MS

“…Rogge et al (1993) investigated the sources of fine organic aerosol from non-catalyst-and catalyst-equipped vehicles using one-dimensional GC-MS but could only resolve 10-15 % of the organics, including n-alkanes and PAHs. Although some studies have utilized soft ionization to analyse diesel fuel at a molecular level (Briker et al, 2001;Eschner et al, 2010;Amirav et al, 2008), very few studies have analysed lubricating oil at a molecular level, which includes the analysis of SVOCs (Worton et al, 2015;Reddy et al, 2012). In order to address the problems of coelution of constituents of the UCM, Worton et al (2014) and Isaacman et al (2012) utilized gas chromatography coupled with vacuum ultraviolet ionization mass spectrometry (GC-VUV-MS) to study the constitutional isomers present in lubricating oil and diesel fuel, respectively, and in a standard crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico (Worton et al, 2015).…”

Modeling and experimental investigation of methylcyclohexane ignition in a rapid compression machine

“…Cyclo-alkanes are important because they comprise a significant fraction of the hydrocarbons in diesel fuel and jet fuel [8]. With the emergence of oil-sand derived fuels with a larger fraction of cyclo-alkanes than conventional fuels [9], cyclo-alkanes will play a larger future role in practical fuel chemistry.…”