Adaptability of Different Nebulizer Systems to Different Silicon Chemical Forms for Gasoline in Inductively Coupled...

Silicon is not a natural component of gasoline but it can cause silica deposition in vehicle combustion system which may lead to severe engine failure. Silicon is present in gasoline in different chemical forms. The analysis of oil products by directly measuring under organic phase through inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) is becoming a widely accepted approach as it is found to be simple and fast. The work focused on the influence of the sample nebulizer systems to different silicon chemical forms by ICP-OES. For a sample introduction system consisting of micronebulizer coupled to a cyclonic spray chamber, the results indicated that the ICP-OES signals depended strongly on the silicon chemical forms, and the higher emission intensities have been attributed to the compound volatility. The variability of the signals induced by the different silicon compounds was less significant for the same nebulizer system with a temperature control device. Nevertheless, the interferences were not effectively mitigated. Nevertheless, direct injection high efficiency nebulizer (DIHEN) introduced in the present work can effectively mitigate the interferences of different silicon chemical forms, is suitable for the determination of silicon in gasoline. The quantitative method with the potential DIHEN nebulizer system showed good linearity and the recoveries ranged from 92.8%～108.7%, the limit of detection was 0.05 mg·kg-1. The relative standard deviation (RSD) was between 1.05% and 4.63%. Compared with the microwavedigestion method, the proposed method was found to be highly simple, rapid, sensitive and accurate, which has foreseen a promising application for silicon determination in gasoline.