Wavelength-dependent excess permittivity as indicator of kerosene in diesel oil.

Adulteration of diesel oil by kerosene is a serious problem because of air pollution resulting from car exhaust gases. The objective of this study was to develop a relatively simple optical measurement and data analysis method to screen low-adulterated diesel oils. For this purpose, we introduce the utilization of refractive index measurement with a refractometer, scanning of visible-near-infrared transmittance, transmittance data inversion using the singly subtractive Kramers-Kronig relation, and exploitation of so-called wavelength-dependent relative excess permittivity. It is shown for three different diesel oil grades, adulterated with kerosene, that the excess permittivity is a powerful measure for screening fake diesel oils. The excess relative permittivity of such binary mixtures also reveals hidden spectral fingerprints that are neither visible in dispersion data alone nor in spectral transmittance measurements alone. We believe that the excess permittivity data are useful in the case of screening adulteration of diesel oil by kerosene and can further be explored for practical sensing solutions, e.g., in quality inspection of diesel oils in refineries.