Abstract
Gasoline and ethanol fuels have been adulterated with methanol in Brazil. Methanol is not permitted in concentrations greater than 0.5 vol% due its toxicity but its lower price stimulates the adulteration. A new approach for quantitative analysis of methanol in gasoline and ethanol fuels is reported employing high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with refractive index (RI) detector on C18 column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) using deionized water as mobile phase (0.6 mL min−1). The method showed good analytical performance in terms of linearity for methanol concentration ranging from 0.5 to 4.5 vol% (coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.999) and from 4.0 to 12.0 vol% (R2 = 0.998). The recoveries (accuracy) values ranged from 98.6 to 103.2%. The results indicated that the developed method is accurate and suitable for the determination of methanol in gasoline with ethanol and ethanol fuel as an alternative procedure to gas chromatography (GC)-based techniques.
Highlights
Gasoline is a petroleum derivative fuel that has a large application in the transport sector
The present study proposes the first application of highperformance liquid chromatography with refractive index detection (HPLC-RI) to develop a quick and less expensive method for quantifying methanol content in gasoline and ethanol fuel
Results obtained from high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-RI and gas chromatography (GC) were compared by means of paired t-test
Summary
Gasoline is a petroleum derivative fuel that has a large application in the transport sector. The excessive use of fossil fuels is thought to increase the greenhouse effect, climate change, air pollution and acid rain.[1] Gasoline is one of the main products from fractional distillation of petroleum, being a complex mixture of hydrocarbons from C5 to C10, with boiling points in the range of 30 to 215 °C, containing traces of oxygenated products, sulfur, nitrogen and metallic compounds, at low concentrations.[2,3] In Brazil, gasoline is classified in “A” or “C” and “additivated gasoline”. Economic and political issues related to the worldwide petroleum usage, government, industry and academic institutions have toward their interest to renewable fuels,[5,6] of which ethanol has remarkable importance as a low-emission and profitable fuel.[7]
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