Low sulfur fuel specifications are presenting tremendous challenges to the refining industry.

Distribution of low sulfur motor fuels by pipelines presents yet another set of challenges.

Ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) will be limited to 15 parts-per-million sulfur (ppm S) by weight (wt/wt) by mid 2006. ULSD will travel through a common pipeline system with 1,000 to 3,000 ppm S (wt/wt) distillates, such as jet fuel.

The opportunity for sulfur contamination of the ULSD diesel is enormous. Rapid, precise, and online determination of total sulfur will provide a means for sulfur contamination detection in the fuel distribution system.

Technicians and engineers came up with a unique approach to perform laboratory simulations of pipeline interfaces between high and low sulfur fuels. This response time and analytical performance of an online method for determination of total sulfur in refined product pipelines follows.