Excitation-emission fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with PARAFAC and MCR-ALS with area correlation for investigation of jet fuel contamination

The contamination of jet fuel has gained attention in the past years as a notable factor in aircraft accidents. Identifying the contamination sources is still a challenge, especially when they have a similar composition to the fuel, such as kerosene solvent (KS). A novel analytical methodology was developed by combining a set of excitation-emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence to area constrained multivariate curve resolution with alternating least-squares (MCR-ALS) and PARAllel FACtor (PARAFAC) analysis, in order to identify KS in blends with JET-A1. For this purpose, a dataset with 50 samples (KS and JET-A1 blends, 2.0–100% v/v) was used to build the multivariate models. Both PARAFAC and MCR-ALS allowed fuel quantification with 4.64% and 3.46% RMSEP, respectively; both models (PARAFAC and MCR-ALS) could quantify KS with high accuracy (RMSEP