ANALYTICAL EVALUATION OF COMMERCIAL FUEL ANALYZER IN GASOLINE AND ETHANOL FUEL QUALITY CONTROL. Brazilian news media is full of examples about fuels out of the compliances and needs to control fuel quality. This work proposed an analytical validation of a commercial near infrared photometer (Xerloq, Tech Chrom Analytical Instruments, Brazil) able to identify percentage of ethanol in fuels comparing with NBR standards. Four procedures were selected: analysis of ethanol percentage in gasoline type C samples comparing with standard method ABNT 13992; analysis of ethanol percentage in fuel ethanol samples comparing with standard method ABNT 5992; linearity correlation and selectivity of standard solution analysis. Comparisons between the photometer and standards measurements were to determine the accuracy and precision of the device which presented a little variation from the norm (ER < 1.3%, sR < 0.4%). With regard to the test for linearity, Ethanol:water mixtures was analyzed with R-squared larger than 0.999 with RMSEV less than 1%. On selectivity tests, Gasoline:Ethanol:water and Methanol:Ethanol:water mixtures were measured with bias error not exceeding 5% for regulated samples. In conclusion, this fuel analyzer can be used to analyze ethanol content in Brazilian fuels with similar results comparing with classical standard volumetric and glass densimeter analysis and may indicate adulteration gasoline and ethanol samples by anomalous data.

It has been recurring adulterations in fuels (such as gasoline, ethanol and diesel), being necessary the exploration of the use of more modern analytical techniques capable of controlling the quality of these fuels, since some regulated tests may be inefficient to detect the adulteration. Among them, it is highlighted proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy, and portable near infrared spectroscopy (microNIR). In this work, it was studied the conformities of 115 samples of seized fuels (76 of gasoline, 23 of ethanol, and 16 of diesel) by means of standardized techniques with parameters established by the ANP. Results obtained were compared to photometer, MicroNIR and 1H NMR analyzes. The analyzes carried out by ANP showed four nonconforming samples (one of gasoline and three of ethanol). By the photometric technique, only 14 gasoline samples had ethanol content permitted by legislation (i.e ≈ 27 %v/v). By 1H NMR analysis, it was possible to verify nonconformities by presence of aromatics and olefins compounds in the gasoline and diesel samples as well as of methanol in fuel ethanol samples. It is also worth noting the efficiency of MicroNIR when combined with unsupervised chemometric methods to indicate nonconformities presented by 1H NMR and photometry techniques.