COSTS, LABORATORY SAFETY, PRODUCTIVITY AND FASTER RESEARCH OCTANE NUMBER AND MOTOR OCTANE NUMBER DETERMINATIONS IN INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY LABORATORIES

Various aspects of industrial laboratory performance including costs, staff productivity, test urgency, and professional health and hygiene-related topics were investigated in this paper. Because environmental considerations should include the working environment, where one may spend a substantial amount of time, this work was aimed at the development of testing methodologies, taking account of these considerations and meeting the new demands currently imposed by the working environment. In the practical example presented, chemometric and Fourier transform middle infrared (FT-MIR) techniques were jointly used in order to predict the two main features of automotive gasolines (research octane number (RON) and motor octane number (MON). Reduced delay-times, and increased repeatability and throughput were additional objectives of this work. In this way, management of smaller amounts of samples and reagents were accomplished.