DETERMINATION OF METHANOL AND METHYL TERT-BUTYL ETHER IN GASOLINE BY INFRARED-SPECTROSCOPY USING THE CIRCLE(R) CELL AND MULTIVARIATE CALIBRATION

The feasibility of predicting concentrations of methanol and methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in gasolines from the mid-infrared absorption spectra was investigated. The C-O bond stretching band region was related to these oxygenated compounds' levels with the aid of multivariate statistics. The sample spectra were taken with the use of a circular internal reflectance (CIRCLE(R)) cell. With the use of partial least-squares (PLS) regression a model with 18 samples was built and used to predict a set of 10 gasolines with good agreement. Two additional samples prepared with other brands of gasoline were analyzed with the same model and no matrix effects were found.