Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Distilling OLD UK petrol

Little_Ghost_again - 9-10-2015 at 15:36

I have a can of old petrol (18 months) thats half full and used for the lawnmower, the smell is much diminished so alot of the high volatile stuff seems to have gone.
I was wondering about distilling the petrol, seeing as its old I am thinking it might be a bit safer, however the boiling points would probably be mostly higher now.
What I would like to know is what is likely to be left in old petrol (would it be Alkenes etc or what), and the likely boiling points. I would like to get fractions around 50c and up
sorry if its a dopey question

Sulaiman - 10-10-2015 at 05:32

I suspect that the various fractions remaining would have close boiling points,
so unless you have got a VERY good fractionating column
I doubt that you could collect pure fractions.

Little_Ghost_again - 10-10-2015 at 07:49

There is still some low fractions around 27C, I have also collected some at 40c and had to stop for the day due to a stupidity moment.

[Edited on 10-10-2015 by Little_Ghost_again]

vmelkon - 11-10-2015 at 04:56

Gasoline (petrol as they say in England) is a very complex mixture. I have done fractional distillation on it. The temperature goes up at 33 C, for a while you get a liquid, then it goes up a little and stops, and it continues like that. I don't have advanced equipment to know what exactly the compounds were.
Composition also varies from summer to winter and from different companies.

Anyway, here is an attachement gasolinecomp.pdf.
It contains a list of compounds in some sample.

Attachment: gasolinecomp.pdf (96kB)
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