Analysis of Bioethanol Impurities with the Spectrum Two FT-IR Spectrometer

Introduction

The intensifying global emphasis on developing sustainable fuel supplies has led to increasing use of fuels derived from biological sources. In this note we show that the Spectrum Two™ FT-IR spectrometer (Figure 1) can be used to develop a quantitative method with sufficient sensitivity to meet the required detection limits for methanol, water, C3–C5 alcohols and gasoline denaturant, while requiring less than two minutes of analysis time per sample.