Automatic gas chromatographic determination of gasoline components : Application to octane number determination

An automatic method has been developed for the determination of gasoline components by gas chromatography. Separation has been achieved on squalane and cross-linked OV-1 capillary columns. Anaytical conditions were optimized and all peaks were identified. Programmed temperature indices, I PT, were used for automatic identifications. These indices appear to be reproducible on different capillary columns having the same commercial specifications with identical analytical conditions. Application of this method to the automatic determination of the Research Octane Number (RON) is demonstrated for samples from reformers and calculated value are compared to values measured by the ASTM stansdardized engine method (D2699).