LGC's low sulphur certified reference materials (CRMs) are ready to meet the needs of fuel testing laboratories when the new limits on sulphur in fuel come into force on 1 January 2009.
LGC offers a range of low sulphur CRMs, developed in collaboration with Bundesanstalt fur Materialforschung und -prufung (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 sulphur emissions, increasingly stringent legislation for sulphur content in fuels has been introduced in recent years.
In 1993, European limits for sulphur in petrol and diesel fuels were 500mg/kg and 2000mg/kg respectively.
By 1998, they had been lowered to 150mg/kg and 350mg/kg, and again in 2005 to 50mg/kg for both fuels.
In an effort to continually drive down the level of sulphur emissions, EC Directive 2003/17/EC stipulated that by 1 January 2005, petrol and diesel containing a maximum of 10mg/kg of sulphur should be widely available on forecourts.
The next stage of the Directive comes into force on 1 January 2009, when this 10mg/kg limit becomes mandatory.
Enforcement of these limits will require validated methods for measuring sulphur in fuels at the appropriate level.
Laboratories validating analytical methods will need to use CRMs to evaluate measurement bias and uncertainty of standard procedures and to establish traceability of measurement results.
To meet the needs of testing laboratories in this field, a set of sulphur in fuel CRMs have been produced, which can be used by laboratories to develop and validate reliable analytical methods to measure sulphur 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 8mg/kg and 20mg/kg sulphur in petrol, and 10mg/kg sulphur in diesel.
