LGC - Helping the Drive for Lower Sulfur in Fuel

LGC’s low sulfur certified reference materials (CRMs) are ready to meet the needs of fuel testing laboratories when the new limits on sulfur in fuel come into force on 1 January 2009.

LGC, an international science-based company and market leader in reference standards and analytical, forensic and diagnostic services, offers a range of low sulfur CRMs, developed in collaboration with Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM). LGC and BAM were two of the founding partners of the European Reference Materials (ERM®) initiative.

As part of a continuing, integrated strategy to reduce sulfur emissions, increasingly stringent legislation for sulfur content in fuels has been introduced in recent years. In 1993, European limits for sulfur in petrol and diesel fuels were 500 mg/kg and 2000 mg/kg respectively. By 1998 they had been lowered to 150mg/kg and 350 mg/kg, and again in 2005 to 50mg/kg for both fuels. In an effort to continually drive down the level of sulfur emissions, EC Directive 2003/17/EC stipulated that by 1 Jan 2005, petrol and diesel containing a maximum of 10 mg/kg of sulfur should be widely available on forecourts. The next stage of the Directive comes into force on 1 January 2009, when this 10 mg/kg limit becomes mandatory.

Enforcement of these new limits will require validated methods for measuring sulfur in fuels at the appropriate level. Laboratories validating their analytical methods will need to use CRMs to evaluate measurement bias and uncertainty of their standard procedures and to establish traceability of their measurement results. To meet the needs of testing laboratories in this field, a set of sulfur in fuel CRMs have been produced, which can be used by laboratories to develop and validate reliable analytical methods to measure sulfur in fuels at these increasingly low levels.

Particularly valuable in helping organisations to meet the testing requirements from 1 January 2009 will be the CRMs containing 8 mg/kg and 20 mg/kg sulfur in petrol, and 10 mg/kg sulfur in diesel. Developed by LGC and BAM, these products offer the very highest quality and reliability.
LGC’s Research & Technology Division, based in Teddington in the UK, acts as the designated UK National Measurement Institute (NMI) for Chemical and Biochemical measurement, and has a long history in the development and validation of analytical methods and the production of reference materials. LGC's Research & Technology Division is accredited to ISO Guide 34 (General Requirements for the competence of reference materials producers) for the production of reference materials.