IP 391: Petroleum products - Determination of aromatic hydrocarbon types in middle distillates - High performance liquid chromatography method with refractive index detection

Overview:

This document specifies a test method for the determination of the content of mono-aromatic, di-aromatic and tri+-aromatic hydrocarbons in diesel fuels, paraffinic diesel fuels and petroleum distillates. This document defines two procedures, A and B. Procedure A is applicable to diesel fuels that may contain fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) up to 30 % (V/V) (as in [1], [2] or [3]) and petroleum distillates in the boiling range from 150 °C to 400 °C (as in [4]). Procedure B is applicable to paraffinic diesel fuels with up to 7 % (V/V) FAME. This procedure does not contain a dilution of the sample in order to
determine the low levels of aromatic components in these fuels. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons content is calculated from the sum of di-aromatic and tri+-aromatic hydrocarbons and the total content of aromatic compounds is calculated from the sum of the individual aromatic hydrocarbon types.
Compounds containing sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen can interfere in the determination; monoalkenes do not interfere, but conjugated di-alkenes and poly-alkenes, if present, can do so.