Abstract
Most commercial gaseous and liquid fuels are mixtures of multiple chemical compounds. In recent years, these mixtures became even more complicated when the suppliers started to admix biofuels into the petrochemical basic fuels. As the properties of such mixtures can vary with composition, there is a need for reliable analytical technologies in order to ensure stable operation of devices such as internal combustion engines and gas turbines. Vibrational spectroscopic methods have proved their suitability for fuel characterization. Moreover, they have the potential to overcome existing limitations of established technologies, because they are fast and accurate, and they do not require sampling; hence they can be deployed as inline sensors. This article reviews the recent advances of vibrational spectroscopy in terms of infrared absorption (IR) and Raman spectroscopy in the context of fuel characterization. The focus of the paper lies on gaseous and liquid fuels, which are dominant in the transportation sector and in the distributed generation of power. On top of an introduction to the physical principles and review of the literature, the techniques are critically discussed and compared with each other.
Highlights
Modern energy conversion technology relies on primary sources based on fossil as well as renewable fuels
This means that energy is transferred from the incident light to the molecule and it reaches an excited state via this indirect two-photon process
Raman spectroscopy has a number of advantages, and some disadvantages compared to other methods
Summary
Modern energy conversion technology relies on primary sources based on fossil as well as renewable fuels. The composition and properties of these mixtures can vary significantly depending on the region where and the time when they are produced This poses a challenge to developers and operators of combustion-based energy conversion facilities as the performance of a given device will change with changing fuel properties. Gaseous and liquid fuels represent the major part of the energy mix Chromatography normally requires sampling, and it is time-consuming and relatively expensive (investment plus operational costs) To overcome these limitations, spectroscopic methods have found more and more applications for the analysis and characterization of fuels in recent years.
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