India’s Minister of State for Petroleum, Panabaka Lakshmi, said that Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) has been advised to research and develop an in-house marker system to check adulteration of petrol and diesel with kerosene. The minister added that gas chromatography (GC)-based technology is a requirement for an effective marker. IOC is exploring the development of a detection device using portable GC-based technology, he said.
The marking system was first tried in 1990 when the oil industry introduced blending of kerosene with furfural. However, this did not work, as furfural is toxic and the system posed problems in blending at port locations where huge quantities of kerosene had to be sourced from parallel marketing network.
Later on, the oil industry conducted an experiment with biomarkers, which again did not work due to operational issues on dosage and non-availability of test kits. (December 7, 2012)