Using gas chromatography to determine the amount of alcohols in diesel fuels.

The European Union tries to reduce carbon dioxide production and reduce fossil fuel consumption. One way to achieve this goal is adding biofuels to regular motor fuels. Biofuels also decrease the production of other harmful substances. This paper evaluates the identification of n-butanol and isobutanol in diesel fuel. The application of n-butanol to diesel fuel is currently being considered. Alcohols blended into diesel fuel have been shown to have a positive impact on solid particle production, smoke emission, etc. Bioethanol and biobutanol can be easily produced from waste products as second-generation biofuels. The experimental part of the paper focuses on the identification of n-butanol and isobutanol in diesel fuel, as it has been previously used for detecting bioethanol additions in diesel fuel. Test samples with the following composition were prepared: 10% of ethanol in diesel fuel; 5%, 10%, 20% of n-butanol in diesel fuel; 5% of n-butanol and 5% of isobutanol in diesel fuel; 10% of n-butanol and 10% of isobutanol in diesel fuel. This paper deals with the use of gas chromatography (GC) in the evaluation of motor fuels. GC analysis can provide a sort of a fuel 'fingerprint' that shows the approximate distillation profile and can reveal the presence of other foreign fractions. Regular evaluation procedures using gas chromatography for the determination of a diesel fuel's quality unfortunately do not exist at the moment. As it is shown, GC could provide very valuable information in fuel quality assessment, making it the method of choice for this procedure.