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.