A Rapid Analysis Method for Determination of Hydrocarbon Types in Aviation Turbine Fuel by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

A rapid analysis method for determination of hydrocarbon types in aviation turbine fuel was investigated in this study. A kind of reversible adsorption material packed as an unsaturated trap was used to separate saturated hydrocarbons and unsaturated hydrocarbons in the GC-MS system. No manual process or organic reagent was needed during the entire analysis process. The contents of 13 kinds of hydrocarbons, including paraffins, monocycloparaffins, dicycloparaffins, tricycloparaffins, monoolefins, cycloolefins, alkylbenzenes, C_<i>n</i>H_2<i>n</i>-8 aromatics, C_<i>n</i>H_2<i>n</i>-10 aromatics, naphthalenes, C_<i>n</i>H_2<i>n</i>-14 aromatics, C_<i>n</i>H_2<i>n</i>-16 aromatics, and C_<i>n</i>H_2<i>n</i>-18 aromatics were calculated by the characteristic mass fragments detected by MS with the modified matrices of ASTM D2425. The overall analysis time was less than 10 min. The precision of this test method has been conducted with 8 laboratories attended and 16 samples analyzed. The performance of this new method was demonstrated by comparing the results tested by ASTM D1319, ASTM D2425, and ASTM D6379. This rapid analysis method can provide hydrocarbon compositions of aviation turbine fuels or other liquid hydrocarbon samples within the same distillation range.