Application of high-performance liquid chromatography in petroleum analysis: Challenges and opportunities

Petroleum is a crucial energy resource that is massively consumed worldwide in the transport, industrial, and agricultural sectors. The hydrocarbon processing industry has a well-defined quality control regime to ensure all finished products comply with the regulatory specifications. Chromatography-based test methods significantly facilitate petroleum product characterization through various approaches. High-performance liquid chromatography is a versatile, precise, and sensitive analytical approach to petroleum characterization. This review discusses its role in petroleum hydrocarbon characterization, focusing mainly on the methodology, fundamental basis, advantages, and limitations of standard and laboratory-developed methods. Besides, the extended role of the technique in contemporary applications involving sustainable fuels has been discussed. This review intends to debate the intervention of high-performance liquid chromatography in analyzing conventional and modern automotive fuels. Critical insights and future perspectives on the technique have also been provided in the interest of the analytical research in this area.