The Quantitative Analysis of Non-Olefinic Gasolines

Abstract

A previous method described the application of gas chromatography to the qualitative analysis of all types of gasoline. This method has now been extended and developed to enable non-olefinic gasolines to be analysed on a quantitative basis. It is particularly suitable for gasolines blended from straight-run and catalytically-reformed components, but products from other refinery processes can be similarly analysed.A number of paraffins, naphthenic and aromatic hydrocarbons were selected as being typical gasoline hydrocarbons, and calibration curves were obtained. It was found that all these curves could be reduced to a general equation, the curve for any individual hydrocarbon being obtained by inserting a specific constant. This, therefore, enabled the calibration curve for any other hydrocarbon to be constructed by simply determining any one point on that curve.For those hydrocarbons which were not available as high purity chemicals, values for the constant were extrapolated from the experimentally determined values of the available hydrocarbons. Hence calibration curves were drawn for these hydrocarbons and those which were not otherwise available. The data so obtained is applied in this paper to the quantitative analysis of three commercial gasolines.The gas liquid chromatography apparatus employed in this study consists of a programme heated column with a non-polar stationary phase, and a flame ionisation detector.