Determination of Water in NIST Reference Material for Mineral Oils

Abstract

The accuracy of the reference concentrations of moisture in electrical insulating oil RM 8506 and lubricating oil RM 8507 (both of mineral type) and specified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as containing 39.7 and 76.8 ppm (w/w) water, respectively, has recently been the subject of debate in this journal. To shed some further light on this controversy, we report in this correspondence results for these oils obtained by two additional methods, one based on specially designed reagents for diaphragm-free Karl Fischer (KF) coulometry and the other based on the concept of stripping at elevated temperature/continuous KF coulometry. A positive interference effect was shown to take place for RM 8506 when the direct coulometric method was used. If the results are corrected for this, the values including six different procedures varied in the range 13.5-15.6 ppm (w/w). For RM 8507, all values were between 42.5 and 47.2 ppm (w/w), which means that the values recommended by NIST for both reference oils using volumetric titration are about twice as high as those obtained with the other techniques. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is presented.