TITLE: High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Group-Type Analysis of the Product of Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis. Final Report.

AUTHOR: J. A. Feldman.

INST.  AUTHOR: Duquesne Univ. of the Holy Ghost, Pittsburgh, PA.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  12 Jan 83,  19p.

ABSTRACT:

Early in this study the unique properties of the Fluorinerts as HPLC eluting solvents became evident. This made it necessary to study behavior of detector response as a function of analyte concentration, the miscibility of different solvents with the fluorinerts, and the solubility of paraffin, olefinic, and Fischer-Tropsch products in the Fluorinerts. Along with these factors, column behavior as a function of preconditioning or activation and particle size had to be evaluated. As most of the interest appeared to be focused in knowing the amount and distribution of the normal paraffins and the terminal olefins, standards using paraffin mixtures from C sub 8 -C sub 15 and olefinic mixtures consisting of members from C sub 9 -C sub 14 were used. When Fischer-Tropsch product samples were employed, it became quite evident that compounds eluting well beyond the retention time for the C sub 15 hydrocarbon were present. As  information relative to the presence of oxygenated compounds, their  possible class or whether aromatic compounds were also present, was lacking, no attempt was made to identify the unknown compounds. The investigations showed that it is possible to separate terminal olefins from normal paraffins provided there is no more than a six carbon difference in chain length using two activated silica columns containing five or six micron packings. One can avoid Schlieren effects by using sufficiently small amounts of analyte. The use of non-mixed solvent systems aid in consistent baselines. Quantitation is achievable within a 10% relative error under optimum separating conditions. 7 figures, 4 tables. (ERA citation 08:012751)

REPORT  NUMBER: DOE/PC/41766-T1

CONTRACT  NUMBER: FG22-81PC41766