Determination of chloride in brazilian crude oils by ion chromatography after extraction induced by emulsion breaking.

The present paper reports on the development of a novel extraction induced by emulsion breaking (EIEB) method for the determination of chloride in crude oils. The proposed method was based on the formation and breaking of oil-in-water emulsions with the samples and the consequential transference of the highly water-soluble chloride to the aqueous phase during emulsion breaking, which was achieved by centrifugation. The determination of chloride in the extracts was performed by ion chromatography (IC) with conductivity detection. Several parameters (oil phase:aqueous phase ratio, crude oil:mineral oil ratio, shaking time and type and concentration of surfactant) that could affect the performance of the method were evaluated. Total extraction of chloride from samples could be achieved when 1.0g of oil phase (0.5g of sample+0.5g of mineral oil) was emulsified in 5mL of a 2.5% (m/v) solution of Triton X-114. The obtained emulsion was shaken for 60min and broken by centrifugation for 5min at 5000rpm. The separated aqueous phase was collected, filtered and diluted before analysis by IC. Under these conditions, the limit of detection was 0.5µgg(-1) NaCl and the limit of quantification was 1.6µgg(-1) NaCl. We applied the method to the determination of chloride in six Brazilian crude oils and the results did not differ statistically from those obtained by the ASTM D6470 method when the paired Student-t-test, at 95% confidence level, was applied.

Optimization of an open-focused microwave oven digestion procedure for determination of metals in diesel oil by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry.

This work reports the optimization of a focused microwave assisted procedure for the wet acid dissolution of diesel oil in order to allow the determination of metals in the samples by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The dissolution process was monitored by measuring residual carbon content (RCC), also by ICP-OES, in the final solutions obtained after application of digestion program. All experimental work was performed using a commercial sample of diesel oil containing 85.74+/-0.13% of carbon. The initial dissolution program comprised three steps: (i) carbonization with H(2)SO(4); (ii) oxidation with HNO(3) and (iii) final oxidation with H(2)O(2). During work it was verified that the first step played an important role on the dissolution process of this kind of sample. It is therefore, necessary to give a detailed optimization of such step. Employing the optimized conditions it was possible to digest 2.5 g of diesel oil with a 40 min-heating program. At these conditions, residual carbon content was always lower than 5%. Optimized methodology was applied in the determination of metals in three diesel oil samples by ICP-OES. Recovery tests were also performed by adding 10 microg of metals, as organic standards, to the samples before digestion. Recovery percentages always higher than 90% were obtained for the metals of interest (Al, Cu, Fe and Ni), except for Zn, which presented recoveries between 70 and 78%.