Development of a Standard, Pure‐Compound Base Gasoline Mixture for Use as a Reference in Field and Laboratory Experiments

In recent years, leaking underground petroleum storage tanks have become a major environmental concern. Federal, state, and local agencies are making efforts to assess, control, and remediate petroleum product leaks. Because petroleum products are mixtures of many compounds and the composition frequently changes, there exists a need for a standard reference mixture that can be used as a basis for comparison in the study of fluid transport properties in porous media and to evaluate leak detection devices. The proposed standard presented here retains the most important liquid and vapor properties (such as vapor density, air diffusion coefficient, and basic chemical constituency) of gasoline mixtures. It also reduces the complexity of the mixture to make it an acceptable standard for routine use in laboratory and field experiments.