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Water Determination in Liquefied Petroleum Gas using GC BID and Ionic Liquid Column Watercol™

Shimadzu Application Data Sheet No.18

Article from Analytix Reporter - Issue 2

Water in petrochemical feedstocks can cause problems for processors. Freezing of pipe lines and valves and poisoning of expensive catalysts are just a few examples.

Monitoring water in petroleum from an upstream source to the downstream processing plant is critical to insure uninterrupted operation.

A new determination option by GC can bypass undesirable chemical interference effects from the petroleum to the “Sulfur interaction” that can skew results obtained by traditional water determination techniques. Shimadzu’s proprietary Barrier Ionization Discharge (BID) detector and Supelco’s water analysis column “Watercol” are combined to separate and measure the water in a formulation of feedstock (Figure 1) and provide a sensitive and accurate result (Table 1). Measurements can be made down to sub-ppm level of water detection.

Chromatogram for water determination (25 ppm) in LPG. Quantification of Limit(S/N=10) and Detection of Limit(S/N=3.3) can be down to 0.66 ppm and 0.22 ppm respectively

Figure 1.Chromatogram for water determination (25 ppm) in LPG. Quantification of Limit(S/N=10) and Detection of Limit(S/N=3.3) can be down to 0.66 ppm and 0.22 ppm respectively

This application is also subject of the ASTM Work Item www.astm.org/DATABASE.CART/WORKITEMS/WK59649.htm