Petroleum products — Determination of boiling range distribution — Gas chromatography method

This document specifies a method for the determination of the boiling range distribution of petroleum products. The method is applicable to petroleum products and fractions with a final boiling point of 538 °C or lower at atmospheric pressure as determined by this document. This document does not apply to gasoline samples or gasoline components. The method is limited to products having a boiling range greater than 55 °C and having a vapour pressure sufficiently low to permit sampling at ambient temperature.

The document describes two procedures.

a) Procedure A allows a larger selection of columns and analysis conditions, such as packed and capillary columns as well as a thermal conductivity detector in addition to the flame ionization detector. Analysis times range from 14 min to 60 min.

b) Procedure B is restricted to only three capillary columns and requires no sample dilution. The analysis time is reduced to about 8 min.

Both procedures have been successfully applied to samples containing fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) up to 20 % (volume fraction).

NOTE For the purposes of this document, the terms "% (mass fraction)" and "% (volume fraction)" are used to represent the mass