Olefin and conjugated diolefin analysis with ASTM D8071

Monitoring refining streams and finished fuels can be quite complex. Traditional methods are overly complicated, time consuming, or labour intensive. Sometimes all three! The more involved the process is, the greater chance of mistakes being made, which usually costs money to fix. Take conjugated diolefin monitoring as an example. Conjugated diolefins easily polymerise when they occur in higher concentrations, which can foul the hydrocarbon streams in your refinery. Plus, monitoring these compounds requires colorimetric titration, which can take more than three hours, even when the process is automated.

You cannot afford to make mistakes when your business is on the line. You need reliable methods that give you the right answer the first time—fast. You need instrumentation that requires very little training and very little routine maintenance. You need the Automated Fuels Analyser from VUV Analytics.

The Automated Fuels Analyser is the new industry standard in hydrocarbon analysis. Combining the power of gas chromatography–vacuum ultraviolet (GC-VUV) spectroscopy, VUV Analyze™ analytical software, and the ASTM D8071 method, you get an easy-to-use analyser for a variety of refinery streams.

A powerful chromatograph and a sensitive detector are critical for fuels analysis, and no product on the market is more robust than GC–VUV. The VUV spectrometer in the Automated Fuels Analyser is a universal detector, so virtually every compound absorbs in the VUV spectrum between 125 and 240 nm. This system provides unmatched selectivity of isomers and co-eluting analytes without the need for chromatographic baseline resolution. The chromatographic data and unique spectral fingerprints deliver an accurate, complete PIONA analysis unmatched by traditional devices.

Once the data are generated, they need to be analyzed. VUV Analyze™ makes truly automated analysis possible, streamlining data processing by matching unique VUV spectral fingerprints against a comprehensive spectral library. Quantitation is a cinch, and you can feel confident in the accuracy of the results.

The Automated Fuels Analyser is the only system compliant with ASTM D8071 for PIONA group type and oxygenate analysis, so you can get precise reads on complex samples at unmatched speeds. VUV Analyze™ can correctly identify co-eluting compounds reliably the first time, every time. This method also requires only a fraction of standards and materials needed for traditional methods.

Some targeted analysis techniques take over three hours! The Automated Fuels Analyzer provides a detailed, rich report in just 34 minutes. There are no valves to malfunction, traps to replace or recalibrate, no pre-columns to retune, no dyes, and no titrations involved. There’s not even a vacuum pump. The Automated Fuels Analyser is the definition of functional simplicity. Optimum uptime and performance are key for your refining operations, and no other tool is capable of PIONA analysis at the same level of robustness.