Development- and Validation-Improved Metrological Methods for the Determination of Inorganic Impurities and Ash Content from Biofuels

Abstract

In this study, five laboratories, namely, BRML (Romania), TUBITAK UME (Turkey), IMBIH (Bosnia and Herzegovina), BAM (Germany), and DTI (Denmark), developed and validated analytical procedures by ICP-MS, ICP-OES, MWP-AES, WD-XRF, and ID-MS for the determination of inorganic impurities in solid and liquid biofuels, established the budget of uncertainties, and developed the method for determining the amount of ash in the measurement range 0–1.2% with absolute repeatability less than 0.1% and absolute reproducibility of 0.2% (according to EN ISO 18122). In order to create homogeneous certified reference materials, improved methodologies for the measurement and characterization of solid and liquid biofuels were developed. Thus, information regarding the precision, accuracy, and bias of the method, and identifying the factors that intervened in the measurement of uncertainty were experimentally determined, supplementing the information from the existing standards in the field.