Determination of organophosphate contaminants in jet fuel

The aircraft used by the Italian Air Force as tanker in flight refuelling o perations is the Boeing 707; the features of the pumping system can generat e jet-fuel contamination by the organophosphoric hydraulic fluid, Skydrol. This contamination could have negative effects on the technological propert ies of jet-fuel, and thus the jet fuel has to be periodically checked to me asure its Skydrol concentration. In the present work two methods to determi ne organophosphate-based hydraulic fluids in jet fuels are described. Both methods are based on gas chromatographic techniques: in the first one a mas s spectrometer detector in the selected ion monitoring mode was used, where as in the second one a flame photometric detector with a optical filter sel ective for phosphorus compounds was employed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V . All rights reserved.