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Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 1723–1729 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings

5th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization (ICMPC 2016)

Review on the Detection of Adulteration in Fuels through

Computational Techniques
Vimal Babua, Rama Krishnab, Naga Manic *
a,b
VFSTR Vignan University,Vadlamudi, Guntur, AP,INDIA
c
UOH,Gachibowli, Hyderabad,Telangana. INDIA

Abstract:

The scope of the paper is to review different works on fuel adulteration process detection using computational techniques.
Gasoline (Motor Spirit/MS) and Diesel (High Speed Diesel/HSD) are major fuels used for transport/Electricity generation
universally. Consumers are facing the threat of fuel adulteration. Adulterants are added to these fuels with other cheaper boiling
point range hydrocarbons having more or less similar composition leading to alter and degrade the quality of the base fuels.
These adulterants are added by the business community for their monetary gains. Detecting such adulterant in fuels is a foremost
task in the interest of the end consumer.
©2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Conference Committee Members of 5th International Conference of Materials Processing and
Characterization (ICMPC 2016).

Keywords:Gasoline; Diesel, Adulteration;Solvents; Computational Techniques.

1. Introduction

The petroleum products are being utilized in transport, power generation as fuel, universally in day to day life. The
consumption is increasing every year to the tune of 4%. The businessmen who sell the transport fuels are adopting
dishonest techniques for their profit by adding low cost hydrocarbon additives to the base fuel. This is causing
environmental pollution. The pollutants coming out as tailpipe exhaust is posing a great threat both to the
environment as well as human health. To check, control the adulterants both in Diesel and Gasoline there shall be

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 – 40 – 2313 – 6247.

E-mail address:uvbabu43@gmail.com

2214-7853©2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Conference Committee Members of 5th International Conference of Materials Processing and
Characterization (ICMPC 2016).
1724 Vimal Babu / Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 1723–1729

perfect mechanism both at laboratory level as well as at statutory level. One such method to analyze the fuel
adulteration is Artificial Neural Networks which is one of the accurate method than any other existing methods.

2. Adulteration Definition:

The Motor Spirit and High Speed Diesel (Regulation of Supply and Distribution and Prevention of Malpractices)
Order, 1998 (India), defines adulteration as the introduction of a foreign substance into motor spirit / high speed
diesel, illegally or unauthorized with the result that the product does not conform to the requirements and
specifications of the product.
The crude oil may vary with the place to place and shall have alkanes (straight and branched chain from about C1
to C4) (low boiling fraction), cyclo alkanes or napthenes, and aromatic hydrocarbons. The main fractions of the
Petroleum are Gas ( C 2 − C5 ) Light Naptha ( C5 − 79 °C), Medium Naptha (79°-121°C), Heavy Naptha (121°-
191°C), Kerosene (191°-277°C), Distillate Fuel Oil (277°-343°C), Gas Oil or Lube stock (343°-566°C), Residuum
(566°C +) [5].

2.1. Extent of Adulteration

The studies reveal that 8.3 % samples which are tested are adultered. This adulteration is enticing businessmen to
go for intelligent mix allowed. They are reaping profit to the tune of more than rupees 25, 000 a day. (Source; Indian
Oil Corporation).the adulterants and gasoline and diesel are shown in table 1 and 2.
Table 1. potential Adulterants for Gasoline (MS)

Table 2 potential adulterants for diesel.

 Vimal Babu / Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 1723–1729 1725

2.2. General Fuel Adulterants:

The factors Profitability, Availability, Blendability of adulterants taken as parameters for added to the base
transport fuels which vary from place to place. Some are
1. Blending small amount of distillate fuels (Diesel/kerosene) into gasoline.
2. Blending small amount of useless waste industrial solvent (lubricants) into gasoline and diesel. These
Industrial solvents are expensive to dispose in an environmentally approved manner.
3. Blending small amount of heavier fuel oils into diesel.

2.3. CONSEQUENCES OF FUEL ADULTERATION

Fuel adulteration lead to monetary losses to the end consumer, greater emissions, decline in rated efficiency of
engines beside damage to the engine parts. Tailpipe emissions of hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO),
oxides of nitrogen (NOx), particulate matter (PM), may lead to air toxin substances. These toxins cause health
problems, sometimes carcinogenic (air toxins like benzene and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) pollutants. Even
the use of biomass as domestic fuel may lead to indoor air pollution.

2.3.1. Gasoline Adulteration: The same boiling point ranges solvents such as toluene, xylene and other aromatics if
added to the gasoline will not show much perceive variation. These solvents if added in higher quantity lead to
enhanced HC, CO, NOx emissions, air toxins.

2.3.2. Diesel Adulteration: The low temperature operability of the fuel (especially for viscosity and cetane number)
like Kerosene is blended with diesel. With increased blending can lead to more sulphur emission. There will be
perceptible change in Color, if there is heavy oil blending in diesel.

3. APPROACH FOR ADULTERATION DETECTION:

3.0. For Gasoline:

The Parameters like density, Distillation, Hydrocarbon Composition (Aromatic, Vol%, Olefins, Vol%, Benzene,
Vol%, Sulphur, ppm) Stability (Existing gum, Potential gum) Octane Number (Research, Motor), Multifunctional
additives-dosage are conducted for Gasoline.

3.1. For Diesel:

The parameters Flash Point, Density, Distillation, Sulphur, Polycyclic aromatics (+2 rings), Total sediment,
Cetane number, Cetane index, Multifunctional additives dosage, Cetane improver presence are selected for test.

4. Testing Methods:

ASTM Tests (ASTM 5134, D6734, AFNOR NF M07-086); Gas Chromatography is the ratio of the
Concentration of solute in stationary phase to Concentration of solute in mobile phase. The test principle is to
generate chromatograms of the samples with the additives to the original refinery sample and to compare the same
for the hydrocarbons like hexane, heptane etc. The deviation in the concentration of hexane, heptane, etc in the fuel
amounted to adulteration.
Unlike the standards various countries are adopting the procedures for physical tests like measuring density with
Hydrometer. The values taken are converted to the standards maintained at 15°C and is compared with the reference
density. The variation shall lie within + 0.0030. Color change is observed due addition of furfural. The Water
contamination is also checked. (Bureau of Indian Standards IS 2796: 2000 IS 1460: 2000 for Gasolene and Diesel
respectively). These methods did not give correct values as compared with the Gas Chromatography.
1726 Vimal Babu / Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 1723–1729

Gas Chromatography is, a known amount of fuel sample is injected which is carried by inert gases like Helium or
Nitrogen gases and a detector measures the concentration of fuel. The peak retention time and area are compared to
the test sample to calculate the concentration. [7] PONA is short form for Paraffins, Olefins, Naphthenes and
Aromatics hydrocarbon mixtures are analysed by separation and quantitation of fractions according to the carbon
number or type of hydrocarbon. PONA has more advantage than the fluorescent indicator adsorption (FIA) method
(JIS K-2536).
Adulteration can also be tested with the Ultra Sound/ Sound based method with Optical fiber sensor [22],
Electronic Method based [4].

5. Normally used Sensors:

Optical Fiber Sensor Based [3], Fiber Optic Raman sensor with Nd-YAG laser (Signal Processing Technique)
[25], IR LED controlled Gas thin film sensor.

Sampling Methods: The additives are added to the pure sample at different proportions and each sample is tested
separately. The data collected is analysed with multivariate approaches to find exact quantity of adulteration taken
place.

Alternate usage of correct fuels; Different methods used for detecting the adulteration Use of alternative fuels
which are less prone to adulteration such as Compressed Natural Gas, Liquefied Petroleum Gas can play a positive
role in minimizing adulteration. But these fuels are having less calorific value and hence cannot meet the transport
fuel requirement. Moreover these fuels are not readily available in the market. The alternate fuel like Bio fuels may
cause air pollution.

6. Abbreviations;

SBP-Special Boiling Point

GAIL-Gas Authority of India Limited
BPCL-Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited
IPCL-Indian Petro Chemicals Limited
IOC-Indian Oil Corporation
MTO-Mineral Turpentine Oil
PDS-Public Distribution Scheme
ONGC-Oil and Natural Gas Commission
PCA-Principal Component Analysis
CDA-Chiral Derivatizng Agent
FT-NIR Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Near Infra Red
PLS-Partial Least Squares
QDA-Quadratic Discriminant Analysis
RDA-Regularized Discriminant Analysis
SIMCA-Soft Independent modeling of Class analogies
KNN-K Nearest neighbour
SVM-Support vector machines
PNN-Polynomial Neural Networks
ANN-Artificial Neural Networks
MLP-Multi Layer Perceptron
RDL-Representational Distance Learning
SPA-Successive projections Algorithm
The combination of infrared spectrometry and chemometric techniques was used for rapid screening analysis to
identify gasoline samples adultered with diesel, Kerosene, Turpentine spirit or thinner. In SIMCA classification
 Vimal Babu / Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 1723–1729 1727

model associated with FTIR spectral data was successfully applied for gasoline adulteration detection and
identification of added solvent was fair due to kerosene and turpentine overlap. The partial least square multivariate
model based on FTIR spectra is proven suitable. In all ANN model is proved to be the accurate model.

Table 3 the ANN model is an accurate model for prediction and is reliable.
1728 Vimal Babu / Materials Today: Proceedings 4 (2017) 1723–1729

Using the support vector machines (SVM) model which has been developed in Matlab to find out a function
(Hardness prediction), that gives a deviation of error from the actual given output and at the same time give right
result. The SVM model generates a unique solution after training. [28] The image processing method may not give
correct result as the colors of the fuel vary from place to place. In the various literatures survey listed in the table 3
the ANN model is an accurate model for prediction and is reliable.

7. Conclusion:

Diesel and Gasoline adulteration can be analysed more accurately with the help of Artificial Neural Networks,
which is a perfect mechanism both at laboratory level as well as at statutory level than any other existing methods.

The exploration of different computational methods using Artificial Neural networks used as learning model for
detection of the extent of adulterants. The most efficient techniques are Multi Layer perceptron, multivariate
analysis, LDA, Fourier Transform using Raman Effect spectroscopy, PLS, SPA, PCA, RDL and the core modelling
is using ANN.

Acknowledgements

The topic have mainly focused on the environmental pollution and emission of toxic gases in the atmosphere with
the increased utilization of the petroleum based fuels beside other, which has been the topic in the twenty-first
session of the conference of the parties (COP) and the eleventh session of the conference of the parties serving as the
meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) will take place from 30 November to 11 December, 2015, in
Paris, France. Climate change conference, Paris, Nov’2015

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