Butanol is a four carbon alcohol with several desirable characteristics like high energy density and low vapor pressure, and water solubility, making it an attractive fuel additive.  Permissible sulfate and chloride limits have not been defined for butanol, but the current ethanol specifications of 4 mg/L sulfate and 40 mg/L chloride  in ASTM D4806 are a good benchmark for the quality of butanol.  This paper describes two simple ion chromatography methods for the determination of total and potential sulfate and total chloride.  Method one (ASTM D7328) requires evaporation of the butanol sample to dryness and reconstitutes in deionized water or 0.90% peroxide, followed by injection onto a Thermo Scientific Dionex IonPac AS4A-SC column with suppressed conductivity detection.  Method two (ASTM 7319) directly injects the butanol sample on an IonPac AS22 column with suppressed conductivity detection and a run time of 15 min.  Linearity, limits of detection and quantification, and precision for both methods will be discussed.

Assays for total and potential sulfate and total chloride in fuel-grade butanol according to ASTM methods D7328 and D7319

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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