Determination of Total Organic Sulfur in Petroleum Products

A procedure was proposed for determining total organic sulfur in petroleum products. The procedure involves the exhaustive hydrogenolysis of sulfur-containing compounds in an autonomous quartz flow reactor under a hydrogen atmosphere at 1000 ± 50°C with the trapping of the hydrogen sulfide formed in an aqueous solution of an alkali followed by the gas-chromatographic determination of H₂S in the trapping solution using dynamic reaction gas extraction and selective flame-photometric detection. The determination limit was 0.01 wt % for sample volumes below 30 L; the relative standard deviation was 7% on average.