Principal Investigator William Green
Project Website http://web.mit.edu/greengp/projects/chromatography.html
The amounts of the various chemicals and sulfur compounds within a fuel sample may be measured using two dimensional chromatography. Both before and after a reaction, the sample is fed through a capillary tube, allowing its components to separate as they adhere differently to the tube. Each component is frozen with liquid nitrogen, then each is fed through a different capillary to separate into even more pure components based off of more specific requirements. Through this process, it can be known what types of sulfur compounds reside in a fuel sample and which remain more inert or react more through the reaction.