OldFool - 8-3-2011 at 13:17
Hello everyone.
I am a fuel tester for sprint cars. My job is to collect a fuel sample from the tank of a sprint car, then using a Gas Chromatograph machine using
Helium gas to detect any other volatile liquids mixed with methanol alcohol, our racing fuel. I use a base line from a sample obtained through our
retailer to compare results. This method has been used for over 20 years and questions have come up about other ways a racing team can circumvent our
testing methods.
I am by no means educated in chemistry. I was chosen for this position because of basic knowledge on operating the chromatograph. I worked with a
high school chemistry teacher that previously held the fuel testing job until his retirement.
Enough of the history. Is there a way to "sniff" the exhaust from a sprint car to detect any type of volatile additives besides methanol? A device
that can read out what said additive is either through the hand held device or from a sample, broken down using a computer/machine.
As stated earlier, I am not educated in chemistry. I found your site through searching for a device that could suit my needs. Maybe there is another
possibility for testing that I am not aware of.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Chordate - 8-3-2011 at 13:31
A GC instrument tells you the relative amount of time that it takes for a sample to pass through the instrument, and how much material was detected at
those times. The only things that the instrument should have a hard time detecting is material which is inert, such as noble gasses. This isn't a
problem because feeding an engine noble gasses won't help their cause.
What COULD happen, though it would be very difficult, is they could find a fuel additive that has the same elution time as a the material you are
looking for. If a smaller amount was used than the methanol it would be very hard to detect. One peak would effectively be "hidden" by the other. The
solution then would be to use a Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer instrument, which will give you an idea of the molecular weights of all the
materials in a given peak, as well as characteristic fragmentation patterns. This instrument should be nigh impossible to fool by that technique.
[Edited on 8-3-2011 by Chordate]
Contrabasso - 8-3-2011 at 14:09
Try a few tests with likely compounds to see what you can detect. You don't have to publish the details.
For example try nitro-methane see if 2 or 20% makes an obvious additional peak on the trace. I've heard of Acetone being proposed as a performance
enhancer for road vehicles, so try 2 and 20% of that too. You are only going to need 1ml of each mix so a few tests should cost pence/cents