Capillary Sensor with Disposable Optrode for Diesel Fuel Quality Testing.

Diesel fuel quality can be considered from many different points of view. Fuel producers, fuel consumers, and ecologists have their own ideas. In this paper, a sensor of diesel fuel quality type, and fuel condition that is oriented to the fuel's consumers, is presented. The fuel quality types include premium, standard, and full bio-diesel classes. The fuel conditions include fuel fit for use and fuel degraded classes. The classes of fuel are connected with characteristics of engine operation. The presented sensor uses signal processing of an optoelectronic device monitoring fuel samples that are locally heated to the first step of boiling. Compared to previous works which consider diesel fuel quality sensing with disposable optrodes which use a more complex construction, the sensor now consists only of a capillary probe and advanced signal processing. The signal processing addresses automatic conversion of the data series to form a data pattern, estimates the measurement uncertainty, eliminates outlier data, and determines the fuel quality with an intelligent artificial neural network classifier. The sensor allows the quality classification of different unknown diesel fuel samples in less than a few minutes with the measurement costs of a single disposable capillary probe and two plugs.