Quantifying organic and inorganic sulfur components

Abstract

Quantifying an amount of sulfur in a petroleum sample includes sequential extraction and quantification of inorganic and organic sulfur species. An exemplary process includes extracting inorganic sulfur components from the sample to yield extracted inorganic sulfur components and a residual sample, and reducing the sulfur in the extracted inorganic sulfur components to yield a first quantity of hydrogen sulfide. The organic sulfur components are extracted from the residual sample to yield extracted organic sulfur components, and the sulfur in the extracted organic sulfur components is reduced to yield a second quantity of hydrogen sulfide. The amount of sulfur in the first quantity of hydrogen sulfide and the amount of sulfur in the second quantity of hydrogen sulfide are combined to yield a total amount of sulfur in the sample.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.