Determination of trace vanadium in petroleum oils by oxygen flask combustion and a catalytic method

The petroleum oil sample is combusted in an improved oxygen flask and vanadium (?0.1 ppm) is then determined by a catalytic method based on spectrophotometric monitoring of the gallic acid-bromate reaction. For most samples, there is no interference from other elements normally present, but an ion-exchange separation prior to catalytic determination is recommended in order to achieve reliable analyses of a wide variety of real petroleum samples.