| Abstract: | A slightly modified, commercially available high resolution capillary gas chromatograph and a PC-based data processing system running proprietary software (“PONA”) have been employed in the development of a system for petroleum type analysis which would be equivalent or superior to the FIA (fluorescent indicator adsorption) method in terms of ease of use and the speed, variety, and accuracy of the analytical data produced. The system is capable of performing identification and quantitation of most of the individual components in a complex gasoline sample consisting of more than 230 components and can report weight percentage and/or volume percentage for each component as well as types by carbon number (e.g., isoparaffins, normal paraffins, olefins, naphthenes, aromatic compounds) within a ca. 70 minute analysis cycle. Precolumn sulfonation to trap olefins and aromatic compounds has been used as an complementary technique to the basic mass spectrometric identification of components of interest. The estimation of correction factors for weight percentage (or volume percentage) calculation are also discussed. Comparisons are made between this system and others, and the results indicate that the proposed method supersedes the conventional method employing FIA. |
