Chromatography Forum

Hi.
We are interested to know if it's possible to recognize who is the fuel producer by analyze the fuel (e.g. Shell fuel from Exxon fuel or BP or ....).

Is this possible ? What do you think ?

Joe

If you have a known sample from a certain batch you might be able to determine if another sample is from the same batch, but as suppliers buy and sell from each other to claim any batch of fuel was refined from a certain supplier might be considered an exaggeration.

IMHO,

best wishes,

Rod

Answer is no, with some qualifiers.

Most global fuel supplies are dynamic, refineries purchase different crudes, and the refinery then adjusts processes for optimal yields of final products ( gasoline, aviation kerosine, diesel, fuel oils, mainly ).
That means the product in the refineries tanks are variable according to region, feedstocks, season, and customer specification. Crude varies with oil field and field ageing, as well as above-ground processing.

Also, in many countries, fuels are a strategic resource, and there are global/national obligations to hold 30? days of stock, so when a tanker arrives it delivers to several companies, who add their own additive using in-line blending, either into their bulk storage tanks, or into their road/rail tankers.

The qualifiers:-
Some companies may use an additive that is unique, but it's seldom a hydrocarbon, usually an organometallic or detergent/dispersant. However most additives come from industry specialist companies ( eg Lubrizol ), and are used in different formulation by several companies.

There may be some refineries that are fed by a single crude source and supply to a regional market. In which case, their output many be traceable. Very difficult to prove, as slight changes to the refinery processing can change composition.

Bruce Hamilton.

I remember reading a story a while ago on "Boston Globe": A lab determined which gas station caused the gasoline leak into a river by comparing the peak pattern using GC/FID (I thought a GCxGC TOF MS would be a much better tool). Depending on what you want to achieve, I'll say it's possible to differenciate fuels from different producers at one region at a specific time.

Characterising spills is very difficult, especially if no oxygenates are present in the fuel at several stations. The gasoline profile will lose aromatics to water solubility, and many volatiles very quickly. If oxygenates are present, the water partitioning behaviour varies.

I'd be very cautious about assigning spills to point sources - unless there was collateral evidence to show that source held unique fuel, or had lost gasoline.

I've seen several spill reports about pollution prosecutions where people claim that the "fingerprint" matches. There's an impression created that a capillary GC FID or MS fingerprint is as unique as human fingerprints.

I think most storage facilities that knowingly leaked would put their hand up and plead guilty, and analyical chromatography would be confirmation that they could have been the source, but doesn't exclude others without much miore work.

Bruce Hamilton