Hyphenated Techniques for Petrochemical analysis

Solving Problems with Hyphenation

The petroleum and petrochemical industry is highly regulated and the vast majority on analysis is carried out using industry standard methods such as those published by ASTM, DIN or the Energy Institute. These methods are also used to check for product quality excursions when field issues are encountered but in many cases more sophisticated techniques are required. This presentation will describe approaches to problem solving field issues using flexible hyphenated chromatographic and mass spectrometry systems. The application of such systems using examples from a range of typical issues encountered in the petroleum and related industries will be presented.

Supercritical Fluid Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry and Petrochemistry - A Perfect Marriage

Recent instrumental developments have delivered the robust SFC instrumentation to fulfil the long promised capability of this technique. The solvent compatibility, solvation power, selectivity and peak capacity of modern SFC coupled with mass spectrometry affords the ideal analytical platform for the analysis of many petrochemical species. SFC therefore affords a complementary technique to GC-MS and HPLC MS.

Hyphenation based on High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) for analyzing petroleum-derived products

HPTLC experienced a great instrumental development in recent years. The modularity of its basic steps, i.e. sample application, chromatographic development and detection, their automation and computer-control confer HPTLC a high degree of flexibility and reliability. Different instruments have been developed for each of the steps as, for example, spray-on sample applicators; Automated Multiple Development (AMD), a technique that uses solvent gradient elution; densitometric detection (UV and fluorescence); as well as on-line coupling with Mass Spectrometry. In this regard, the introduction of an elution-based TLC-MS interface, based on the extraction and direct transfer of chromatographic peak, has allowed this coupling to be carried out in an efficient way, and has opened the possibility of expanding the connection with other detectors. Therefore, different hyphenation strategies are possible according to a particular analytical issue, with the additional possibility of evaluating only target selected zones of chromatographic plate without the need of making a complete experiment. This, together with the high sample throughput and low solvent consumption leads to significant savings in the cost of analysis.