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Study and Development of Fuel Adulteration Detection System

Article in Bioscience Biotechnology Research Communications · December 2020

DOI: 10.21786/bbrc/13.14/104

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Biosc.Biotech.Res.Comm. Special Issue Vol 13 No 14 (2020) Pp-462-466

Study and Development of Fuel Adulteration Detection

System
Harsh Mahajan1, Geetesh Mokhare2, Ankita H. Harkare3,
Deepak G. Khushalani4, B.A. Neole5 and Rakshal Agrawal6
1
Research Intern, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management,
Nagpur, India, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
2
Research Intern, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management,
Nagpur, India, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
3
Assistant Professor, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management,
Nagpur, India, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
4
Assistant Professor, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management,
Nagpur, India, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
5
Assistant Professor, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management,
Nagpur, India, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
6
Assistant Professor, Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and
Management, Nagpur, India, Department of Industrial Engineering

ABSTRACT
Over the years, the rise in the fuel prices has lead the adulteration market to develop new techniques for blending the
inferior adulterants into the highly taxed petroleum products. Despite of various adulteration monitoring techniques
existing in place, this illegal practice of profit making by using subsidized fuels as adulterants still persists. The emission
from consumption of such adulterated fuels has contributed to the global Air pollution and various health hazards
linked to it. This calls for the ease and precision of monitoring techniques. This study reviews the use of emerging fields
of technology like microfluidics, metamaterial, microfabrication and fiber optics to develop Adulteration detection
systems for Diesel which provides higher sensitivity and portability as compared to the existing lab based methods. Also,
experimentation results measuring density of the fuel suggests adulteration above 16.66% is unacceptable.

KEY WORDS: Adulteration, Density, Fuel, Microfluidics.

INTRODUCTION
ARTICLE INFORMATION Adulteration is the introduction of an inferior standard
*Corresponding Author: [email protected] foreign substance into a higher-level substance which
Received 14th Oct 2020 Accepted after revision 29th Dec 2020 demeans the overall quality and devalues the product.
Print ISSN: 0974-6455 Online ISSN: 2321-4007 CODEN: BBRCBA This practise is unlawful and unethical. After the addition
Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science Clarivate Analytics USA and
of such materials the final product doesn’t meet the legal
Crossref Indexed Journal standards and distribution of which makes the whole
process illegal. According to the Forensic guide for
Criminal Investigators by NICFS, if the Petrol or High

462
NAAS Journal Score 2020 (4.31)
A Society of Science and Nature Publication,
Bhopal India 2020. All rights reserved.
Online Contents Available at: http//www.bbrc.in/
Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21786/bbrc/13.14/104
Mahajan et al.,

Speed Diesel oil (HSDO) fails to fulfil the requirements of physico-chemical methods for testing the adulteration
the Bureau of Indian Standards Specification no. IS 2796 are mentioned in Table 2. All these techniques, being
and IS no. 1460, then it is considered as adulterated. Such lab based, are time demanding and they need trained
products have health as well environmental hazards. personals to carry them out.
The emission from consumption of such contaminated
fuel causes mixing of carcinogenic pollutants in the air Moreover, these methods are limited to only the
leading to the various ailments and degradation of air. It detection. This calls for testing techniques that are fast
also affects the engines, deteriorating their performance and equipments that are portable. Multidisciplinary fields
and life as explained by Boadu et al. like Microfluidics to develop the Lab on Chip solutions
to overcome the disadvantages of the lab based testing
According to a recent report published in Hindustan techniques. Methods involving application of MEMS
times, out of the overall Indian refined fuel sale, diesel have also been designed.PDMS moulding techniques
consumption occupies 40% of the total. As classified have been used to the advantage of PDMS being a low
by the Ministry of Petroleum And Natural Gas, Diesel cost material and ease of fabricating micro channels out
in it’s two forms, i.e. High Speed Diesel oil (HSDO) and of it. Rapid bonding along with advantageous optical
LDO (Light Diesel Oil) showed a growth of 4.4% and properties make it a suitable material for prototypes and
21.7% respectively in their consumption making a total testing microfluidic systems as suggested by Byung-Ho
volume of 84.126 MMT ( 83.528 TMT HSDO + 598 TMT Jo et al.
LDO). This high amount of the consumption gives rise
to the economic opportunities for adulteration market Material and MethodS
as one of the major contributors towards loss of the
government’s revenue as explained by Economics & Various methods have been suggested in recent times
Statistics Division. for adulteration detection. Some of the methods are
discussed here for getting an insight into the suggested
topic of research.
Table 1. List of Adulterants Found in Diesel (HSDO)
I.Ultrasonic Radiation: Measuring the speed of the
Sr No. Substance Source ultrasound through fluids is used as a detection method
where Concentration analyzer is used to send ultrasonic
1. Kerosene Marketers pulses through the fluid as medium. Firstly, Diesel is
2. MTO Refineries
taken as the medium followed by the samples of it mixed
with kerosene in known ratios. The observed speed of
3. C9 Raffinate Petrochemicals
the sound is then converted into the corresponding
4. Iomex NA adulteration percentage as explained by R.K. Sharma
5. Aromex Digboi et al. For analyzing the adulteration, the mathematics
used to calculate the percentage of adulteration from the
observed speed of sound through the Analyzer is given
Tabel 2. ASTM Test Methods for Monitoring Fuel by South Asia Urban Air Quality Management Briefing
Adulteration Note no.7:

Tested Parameters Tests X= 0.0072*V-20.397*V+14441

where,
Cetane Number (Ignition Quality) ASTM D613 X = Percent of Adulteration (by volume), and
Flash Point ASTM D93
Density ASTM D1298 V = Speed of sound in m/sec
Kinematic Viscosity ASTM D445
R.K. Sharma et al. used pulse echo method to detect the
Distilation ASTM D86
speed of ultrasound in the samples. Figure 1 and 2 suggests
the changes in speed of sound and Density of mixture
The challenge while testing for the adulterations in due to increased values of adulteration in the actual fuel.
fuels is that the adulterants that are being searched are This concept of changes in density of the mixture will
already present in them in their consumed form. There be utilized in our experimental set up as well. Though
is a range in which their presence is permitted. Instead viscosity was not measured but its effect on the speed
of the presence, the composition of the adulterated fuel of sound formed the basis of the experimentation. The
is checked and the results are drawn out by observing test equipment showed precise results and was portable
the percentage of that adulterant as explained by Bhanu enabling the field testing. Viscosity measurement will be
Prasad et al. The existing methodologies that are being included in the experimental setup suggested by us.
used are bulkier and lab based. The tests and standards
suggested by The American Society for Testing and II. Fiber Optics: An optical fiber with a small length
Materials (ASTM) are used globally. Some other tests of absorbing cladding removed is inserted into a
are Paper Filter Test (As suggested by NICFS), Density glass container such that the length of the removed
Measurement (Used mostly in practise). Some of the cladding is exposed to the test fluid in the container.

463
 Mahajan et al.,

The experiment used the concept of refractometry for III. Lab on Chip Solutions using MEMS and Microfluidics:
the experiment. Sukhdev Roy suggested sending a laser Lab on chip devices provide miniaturised and more
light thorough the optical fiber and the difference in the precise solutions to the lab based experimentations for
power transmitted and received was observed. Using the measurement or processing techniques. Microfluidics
power, the absorbance of the medium was found out and incorporates the study of fluidic behaviour at a micro
the samples are compared on the basis of the calculated level. At the micro stage, the processing or manipulation
absorption coefficient. Figure 3 defines the suggested of material gets convenient. Such devices give in physical
experiment setup where the sensitivity of the test is a as well as technological advantages. The concept of
variable and is directly proportional to the length of microfluidics provides a technological liberty as there
the exposed region of the fiber (Length for which the are numerous analytical and processing techniques for
cladding is removed). Till 20% of the adulteration, the analysis the test samples at a micro level. The Y-channel
normalized power decreases and then increases with suggested by Ankita H. Harkare will be utilized for
the increase in the adulteration. The test concluded that developing the microchannel for sample collection.
addition of kerosene beyond 20% volume by volume,
the absorbance of the fuel increases. The experiment
Figure 4: (a) Y-shaped channel (b) Y-shaped serpentine
gave the variation of bulk absorbance, another physical
property on the basis of which the adulterated fuel sample channel (c) Y-shaped channel with obstacles.
can be monitored. Yet it is not able to tell the extent of
adulteration.

Figure 1: Speed of sound in Deisel+Kerosene Mixture

Figure 5: Fabricated Microfluidic

chip

Figure 2: Density of Deisel+Kerosene Mixture

Figure 3: Schematic diagram of the experimental set-up.

As suggested by Mary Salve et al., Image processing can
also be an effective approach for developing a readout
technique. One such method can be texture analysis of
samples captured by camera to analyse the uniformity
of texture and using stochastic processes to compute the
adulteration. These can be detected very effectively using
the methods suggested by Purva patil et al. Here blurring
aspect is highlighted while preserving the sharpness and
continuity of edges. The noise is removed by averaging
and blurring of images at the edges is minimized. Here,
sudden transitions in edges are accurately recognized

464
Mahajan et al.,

for visual appeal. Image processing can be employed to make it easy to check the adulteration using a handy
examine the micro test samples in microfluidic devices. portable device.The sample experimentation is listed
One such technique as suggested uses PDMS micro in Table 3. Experimentation results for the density of
channel to perform colorimetric detection methodology samples using hydrometer for the development of look
to detect detergents in milk samples. up table.

Proposed Design and Experimentation: Observations based on the readings suggest that the
I. Microfluidic Channel: The design focuses on developing density of the sample went on increasing with the
a Y shaped Microfluidic Hydrometer. Such micro channels increase in percentage of kerosene in the sample. The
cater a better platform for the quantitative analysis. Adulteration of Diesel with Kerosene above 16.66%
The Microfluidic Hydrometer focuses on detecting the volume by volume of the sample is not accepted
density of the introduced fuel and this will be compared according to the regulations. These readings will be fed
with the Look up table to detect Fuel adulteration in in the system as lookup table which will be utilized to
percententages. Using the studies suggested in above check the samples in micro volumes. However, these
methods an effective experimentation setup is suggested readings will still have errors and the quality of diesel
which will lead to portable device which can be carried might vary for different companies. Hence, in order to
along by the user in order to detect adulteration in make a full proof system it also becomes important to
fuel. include quality improvement techniques such as Six
Sigma to ensure better results. Systematic analysis of
data along with the process parameter will be completed
Figure 6: Block Diagram of Experimentation SetUp
which will enable us to focus on the correct identification
of error and gradually the errors will be minimized to
ensure quality improvement after testing as suggested
by Sharma et al.

Conclusion
This review suggests an operative portable testing
mechanism monitor the extent of adulteration by
determining the density of contaminated test samples and
comparing them with that of look up table (According
to the standard regulations). The device is designed in a
manner which makes it reusable with the same accuracy
with each test. Due to the use of RTOS, the device can
Table 3. Experimentation Results be recalibrated in accordance with the fluid to be tested
which makes the application versatile. Batch production
would certainly reduce the cost and the device can then
S.N. Volume/ % Adulteration Density be deployed for the application.
Adulterated (gm/ml)
Sample Acknowledgements
Mixture
We acknowledge Dr. Jayu Kalambe, Co-ordinator,
1 210/0 0-1% 1.15 Center of Excellence, Microsystems, RCOEM, Nagpur
2 200/10 5-10% 1.55 for making the facilities readily available for use and
3 180/30 10-16.66% 1.16
experimentations.
4 170/34 18-25% 1.171
5 150/60 25-50% 1.18
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