Determination of the Aromatics Content in Mineral Oils by LF NMR

Abstract

Molecular group composition analysis of mineral oils is helpful to predict the performance of a future lubricant and to assess the compatibility of plasticizer oil with rubbers. The method of pulsed low-frequency NMR relaxation was used to determine the molecular group composition of 11 mineral oil samples, and the ratio of aromatic and non-aromatic hydrocarbons in them was calculated. NMR measurements were performed on a Chromatec-Proton 20M NMR analyzer with a 1H resonance frequency of 20 MHz. The method used consists in recording free induction decay signals, reconstructing the total signal amplitude, estimating the relative signal amplitude per unit mass of the sample, and calculating the proportion of aromatic hydrocarbons in the sample. The results were compared with those obtained by the standard chromatographic method. A high degree of correlation (R2 = 0.99) was observed between the results.