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Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions

Adulteration of fuels is a major problem, especially in developing and third world countries. One such case is the adulteration of diesel oil by kerosene. This problem contributes to air pollution, which leads to other far-reaching adverse effects, such as climate change. The objective of this study...

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Autores principales: Kanyathare, Boniphace, Peiponen, Kai-Erik
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29758004
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18051551
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author Kanyathare, Boniphace
Peiponen, Kai-Erik
author_facet Kanyathare, Boniphace
Peiponen, Kai-Erik
author_sort Kanyathare, Boniphace
collection PubMed
description Adulteration of fuels is a major problem, especially in developing and third world countries. One such case is the adulteration of diesel oil by kerosene. This problem contributes to air pollution, which leads to other far-reaching adverse effects, such as climate change. The objective of this study was to develop a relatively easy measurement method based on an inexpensive, handheld Abbe refractometer for the detection of adulteration and estimation of the ascending order of the amount of kerosene present in adulterated samples in field conditions. We achieved this by increasing the volume of pure diesel sample in the adulterated diesel oil, and measuring the trend of refractive index change, and next, exploiting the true and ideal permittivities of the binary mixture. The permittivity can be obtained with the aid of the measured refractive index of a liquid. Due to the molecular interactions, the true and ideal permittivities of diesel–kerosene binary liquid mixture have a mismatch which can be used to screen for adulterated diesel oils. The difference between the true and the ideal permittivity is the so-called excess permittivity. We first investigated a training set of diesel oils in laboratory in Finland, using the accurate table model Abbe refractometer and depicting the behavior of the excess permittivity of the mixture of diesel oil and kerosene. Then, we measured same samples in the laboratory using a handheld refractometer. Finally, preliminary field measurements using the handheld device were performed in Tanzania to assess the accuracy and possibility of applying the suggested method in field conditions. We herein show that it is not only possible to detect even relatively low adulteration levels of diesel in kerosene—namely, 5%, 10%, and 15%—but also it is possible to monitor the ascending order of adulteration for different adulterated diesel samples. We propose that the method of increasing the volume of an unknown (suspected) diesel oil sample by adding a known authentic diesel sample and monitoring excess permittivity is useful for the screening of adulterated diesel oil in field measurement conditions.
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spelling pubmed-59823322018-06-05 Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions Kanyathare, Boniphace Peiponen, Kai-Erik Sensors (Basel) Article Adulteration of fuels is a major problem, especially in developing and third world countries. One such case is the adulteration of diesel oil by kerosene. This problem contributes to air pollution, which leads to other far-reaching adverse effects, such as climate change. The objective of this study was to develop a relatively easy measurement method based on an inexpensive, handheld Abbe refractometer for the detection of adulteration and estimation of the ascending order of the amount of kerosene present in adulterated samples in field conditions. We achieved this by increasing the volume of pure diesel sample in the adulterated diesel oil, and measuring the trend of refractive index change, and next, exploiting the true and ideal permittivities of the binary mixture. The permittivity can be obtained with the aid of the measured refractive index of a liquid. Due to the molecular interactions, the true and ideal permittivities of diesel–kerosene binary liquid mixture have a mismatch which can be used to screen for adulterated diesel oils. The difference between the true and the ideal permittivity is the so-called excess permittivity. We first investigated a training set of diesel oils in laboratory in Finland, using the accurate table model Abbe refractometer and depicting the behavior of the excess permittivity of the mixture of diesel oil and kerosene. Then, we measured same samples in the laboratory using a handheld refractometer. Finally, preliminary field measurements using the handheld device were performed in Tanzania to assess the accuracy and possibility of applying the suggested method in field conditions. We herein show that it is not only possible to detect even relatively low adulteration levels of diesel in kerosene—namely, 5%, 10%, and 15%—but also it is possible to monitor the ascending order of adulteration for different adulterated diesel samples. We propose that the method of increasing the volume of an unknown (suspected) diesel oil sample by adding a known authentic diesel sample and monitoring excess permittivity is useful for the screening of adulterated diesel oil in field measurement conditions. MDPI 2018-05-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5982332/ /pubmed/29758004 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18051551 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Kanyathare, Boniphace
Peiponen, Kai-Erik
Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions
title Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions
title_full Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions
title_fullStr Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions
title_full_unstemmed Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions
title_short Hand-Held Refractometer-Based Measurement and Excess Permittivity Analysis Method for Detection of Diesel Oils Adulterated by Kerosene in Field Conditions
title_sort hand-held refractometer-based measurement and excess permittivity analysis method for detection of diesel oils adulterated by kerosene in field conditions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982332/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29758004
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s18051551
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