Determination of radiocarbon content in liquid fuel blends by accelerator mass spectrometry and liquid scintillation counting in the Gliwice radiocarbon and mass spectrometry laboratory

The increase in biobased material usage requires the methods of verification to investigate the actual content of biocarbon in such materials, including liquid fuels. The determination of biocarbon in liquid samples using ¹⁴C required adaptation of existing sample preparation methods. In this study, both accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and liquid scintillation counting (LSC) methods were used to determine the content of ¹⁴C in six different liquid fuel blends produced from purely bio-based hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and a ¹⁴C-free petrodiesel sample (ON/UF-BC). The results obtained for pure petrodiesel provide background values. The results indicate a good agreement between LSC and AMS, and a linear correlation between the ¹⁴C measurement results for blended samples and HVO content affirmed the reproducibility between the two methods. The repeatability of AMS results was tested on 10 aliquots of one of the blends, and the results were deemed reproducible.