Nov-2019

A better approach to detailed hydrocarbon analysis with Verified Hydrocarbon Analysis™

Most refineries rely on Detailed Hydrocarbon Analysis (DHA) to analyse and monitor specific contents of their fuel streams. While this technique has been fine-tuned over the years, it still suffers from many shortcomings.

Alex Hodgson
VUV Analytics

Article Summary

The most glaring of these is the time investment! To analyse a single sample, it is a nearly three-hour run time coupled with an hour (or more) of manual data review, which can only be done by an experienced user. At best, this test method could be described as tedious and at worst, inaccurate quantitation can cost a company millions of dollars in unrealised revenue and/or EPA penalties. Also, relying on the speciation of hundreds of compounds based solely on retention time is precarious and often simply wrong.

VUV Analytics has developed a new solution to the difficulties surrounding DHA and the speciation of gasoline-range fuel streams: Verified Hydrocarbon Analysis (VHA). VHA can be run on the VUV Analyzer™ Platform which combines the power of GC-VUV technology with the push-button simplicity of VUV Analyze™ Software into one easy-to-use solution.

VHA uses the power of spectral identification, retention markers, and Time Interval Deconvolution™, to provide confident speciation and quantitation of gasoline (Figure 1). VHA speciates 90-95% of finished gasoline composition and provides a PIONA-class designation to every component (regardless of speciation). You can speciate a compound of interest by adding it to the “Analytes to Include” list and prioritise the most important compounds in your analysis (Figure 2). In addition to higher confidence in results, VHA has a run time of only 50 minutes, compared to traditional DHA which is close to 3 hours. Not only is the run time reduced with VHA, but the data analysis and review are both automated and can be done in minutes with VUV Analyze!

Substituting VHA for traditional DHA in refineries will allow users to be more confident in the data being generating while saving hours of valuable time, increasing their productivity and decreasing the headaches that can come with inaccurate data. If you’re interested in learning more about VUV Analytics’ Verified Hydrocarbon Analysis (VHA) watch the latest eLearning session here. If you’re interested in learning more about the VUV Analyzer Platform and all the methods it can run (ASTM D8071 for gasoline, ASTM D8267 for jet fuel, etc.).