Application of liquid-phase microextraction for the determination of sulfur compounds in crude oil and diesel

• For the first time, application of LPME procedure was developed for the determination of sulfur compounds in crude oil samples.
• Results of LPME show better than conventional ASTM procedure.
• Simple and cost-effective method suitable for complex samples.

A liquid-phase microextraction (LPME) method was for the first time developed for the determination of sulfur compounds in Arabian crude oil and diesel. A wide range of sulfur compounds, which included benzothiophene, dibenzothiophene and their derivatives, was used for model compounds. The analyses were performed by a gas chromatography equipped with a sulfur chemiluminescence detector (GC-SCD). Under optimum conditions, a linearity was achieved for the extraction sulfur compounds between 0.10 and 250 μg mL−1 with the correlation of determination ranging from 0.98 to 0.99. Applying the same optimum conditions, the extraction of 77–91% of the sulfur compounds in the Arabian light, Arabian medium and Arabian heavy, and diesel was achieved.