On estimating physical and chemical properties of hydrocarbon fuels using mid-infrared FTIR spectra and regularized linear models

Abstract

The concept of a compact, economical FTIR-based analyzer for estimating the properties of hydrocarbon fuels with small amounts of fuel is proposed. The high correlations between mid-IR FTIR absorption spectra of fuel vapor in the range 3300–3550 nm and 15 physical and chemical properties, such as density, initial boiling point, surface tension, kinematic viscosity, number of carbon and hydrogen per average molecule, and derived cetane number, for 64 hydrocarbon fuels are demonstrated. Lasso-regularized linear models based on linear combination of absorption cross sections at selected wavelengths are built for each of these physical and chemical properties, yielding accurate estimations.