Fully robotic method for the determination of diene value in several types of fuels

Abstract

A fully automated method for the determination of the diene value in several types of fuels based on the use of a robotic station involving potentiometric and photometric titrators is reported. The principle of the method is the standard procedure involving hydrolysis of the non-reacted maleic anhydride, extraction of maleic acid from the organic phase and subsequent determination. The assembly works in an unattended fashion thus eliminating the problems inherent to the determination of this routine parameter in the laboratory. The automated method affords a precision, expressed as average of relative standard deviation, of 1.82%. The good agreement between the results obtained by the proposed and those from conventional methods for the target parameter confirms its excellent performance and usefulness.