GCxGC Technology Used in Award-Winning Paper

The American Chemical Society (ACS) recently honoured Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute with the prestigious R.A. Glenn Award, which signifies the most innovative and interesting technical paper presented at the Fuel Chemistry Division of the 2013 ACS National Meeting. The award is based on the oral presentation, technical excellence, and the quality of the preprint, and is named in honor of Richard A. Glenn, who served as Assistant Director of Research at Bituminous Coal Research, Inc., and as Chairman of the Fuel Chemistry Division in 1960.

The award is for the technical paper “Sulphur Group Type Response to an Oxidative Desulphurisation Treatment,” which utilised two-dimensional gas chromatography (GCxGC) from LECO and sulphur selective detection to identify that oxidation of sulphides/disulphides/thiophenes and benzothiophenes, the two common sulphur group types in military jet fuels, can be greater than 95% for high sulphur feeds (1400 ppmw). The paper’s authors are Michael Timko of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (lead author); Ezequial Schmois, Pushkaraj Patwardhan, Yulko Kida, Caleb Class, and William Green of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Robert Nelson and Christopher Reddy of the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

“We used a LECO (USA) GCxGC-TOFMS and a LECO GCxGC-modified with a sulphur detector in order to find and identify sulphur-containing species created during a unique and novel oxidative desulphurisation of jet fuel,” said Robert Nelson. “The goal of this project is to reduce the concentration of sulphur-containing species in jet fuel, which in turn results in lower concentrations of sulphur species in the atmosphere and creates less acid rain.”

The Division of Fuel Chemistry will present the award at the Fall ACS National Meeting in Indianapolis in September. Look for more information in the coming months.