Rapid detection of fuel adulteration using microfabricated gas chromatography

Rapid and accurate quality control for fuel adulteration is a major economic and health concern. Current technology lacks capability to provide speedy and accurate point of sale (POS) solutions. Most of the work done on portable solutions rely on absorbance spectroscopy, which provide a qualitative solution with a trade-off between speed and accuracy. This paper demonstrates a technique based on micro gas chromatography (mu GC) for portable, fast, and accurate analysis of diesel fuels adulterated with kerosene. The separation columns are fabricated using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. The columns are 1 m-long and consist of an embedded array of pillars. Two different stationary phase coating were examined to explore the efficacy of the proposed technique. The analysis relies on aggressive pressure and temperature programming of the chip to obtain partially separated chromatograms. When analyzed with well-established chemometrics methods such as Principal Component Analysis and Partial least Squares Regression a linear relationship between the chromatograms and diesel purity was determined. The separation column could discriminate as little as 5% added kerosene to diesel fuel with only four seconds of chromatogram analysis.