• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.161-167
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• 2020

Petroleum is the most used energy source in Korea with a usage rate of 39.5% among the available 1st energy source. The price of liquid petroleum products in Korea includes a lot of tax such as transportation·environment·energy tax. Thus, illegal production and distribution of liquid petroleum is widespread because of its huge price difference, including its tax-free nature, from that of the normal product. Generally, illegal petroleum product is produced by illegally mixing liquid petroleum with other similar petroleum alternatives. In such case, it is easy to distinguish whether the product is illegal by analyzing its physical properties and typical components. However, if one the components of original petroleum product is added to illegal petroleum, distinguishing between the two petroleum products will be difficult. In this research, we inspect illegally produced gasoline, which is mixed with methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) as an octane booster. This illegal gasoline shows a high octane number and oxygen content. Further, we analyze the different types of green dyes used in illegal gasoline through high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). We conduct component analyses on the simulated sample obtained from premium gasoline and MTBE. Finally, the illegal gasoline is defined as premium gasoline with 10% MTBE. The findings of this study suggest that illegal petroleum can be identified through an analytic method of components and simulated samples.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.232-239
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• 2021

Petroleum is the most consumed energy source in Korea with a usage rate of 38.7% among the available primary energy sources. The price of liquid petroleum products in Korea includes taxes such as transportation·environment·energy tax. Thus, illegal production and distribution of liquid petroleum is widespread because of its huge price difference from that of the normal product and its tax-free nature. Generally, the illegal petroleum product is produced by mixing liquid petroleum with other similar petroleum alternatives. The two kinds of gasoline, common gasoline and premium gasoline, are being distributed in Korea. The premium gasoline is often adulterated with cheaper common gasoline that lowers the octane number of gasoline. It is possible to distinguish them with their color difference, green and yellow for different grade gasoline. However, when small volume of common gasoline is added to premium gasoline, it is difficult to determine whether premium gasoline contained common grade or not. In this study, we inspect gasoline, which is illegally produced by mixing common gasoline to premium gasoline. When the ratio of mixing common gasoline is increased, premium gasoline shows decreasing absorbance at 600 nm and 650 nm under UV-Vis spectrometer. Moreover, the detected intensity (mV·s) of green dye in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was decreased by common gasoline under 0.99 correlation value. The more the common gasoline is mixed, the more olefin and naphthene are detected by gas chromatography. In addition, trimethyl pentane as octane improver, paraffin and toluene are decreased by common gasoline mixing. The findings of this study suggests that illegal petroleum can be identified by analysis of components and simulated samples.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.1021-1025
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• 1999

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been successfully utilized for the rapid identification of six typical petroleum products such as light straight-run (LSR), naphtha, kerosine, light gas oil (LGO), gasoline, and diesel. The spectral features of each product were reasonably differentiated in the NIR region, and the spectral differences provided enough qualitative spectral information for discrimination. For discrimination, principal component analysis (PCA) combined with Mahalanobis distance was used to identify each petroleum product from NIR spectra. The results showed that each product was accurately identified with an accuracy over 95%. Most noticeably, LSR, kerosine, gasoline, and diesel samples were predicted with identification accuracy of 99%. The overall results ensure that a portable NIR instrument combined with a multivariate qualitative discrimination method can be efficiently utilized for rapid and simple identification of petroleum products. This is especially important when local at-site measurements are necessary, such as accidental petroleum leakage and regulation of illegal product blending.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.629-637
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• 2015

As concern about energy security and global warming many countries have been making effort to reduce fossil fuel. In the case of US, as one of the efforts, the standards of the alcohol vehicle fuels(including blended with gasoline) have been established. Alcohol is known that make some trouble concerning startability, durability and corrosion when using as fuel of a conventional vehicle. For these reason, alcohol usage needs not only the fuel standard, but also a modified car. In the case of Korea, although there are no the standard and the modified vehicle yet, high concentration alcohol blended fuel has being sold at illegal market. In this study, exhaust gas and performance of the conventional vehicle that alcohol(methanol and isopropyl alcohol) blends were fueled were measured to notify danger of using them without preparation of institutional arrangements. Also, to analyze correlation characteristics of the fuels and them, property test of the fuels was conducted. The test result show that bad-startability caused by low RVP and high T10 affected increase in NMOG and CO. NOx was increased under the highest short term fuel trim caused by high Oxygen content and low NHV of alcohol. According to increasing as alcohol content, fuel economy and acceleration ability were decreased but $CO_2$ was not significantly decreased.