Toluene Concentrations in Commercial Gasoline by GCMS. Jeff Eitner and Jessica Murray.  2006.

The purpose of this experiment was to compare the concentrations of toluene (gram/gallon) in commercial gasoline, Samples from two different gas stations were taken. One from Chevron Station, labeled GasA, and the other from the 76 Station labels GasB. Both samples were marked as regular unleaded with an 87 octane rating. The samples were prepared in dichloromethane (DCM) and an HP GCMS was used to analyze all of the samples. A standard addition of Toluene to one of the samples was used to determine the signal increase of out target analyte. The concentration of toluene for each sample was determined to be 1.80±0.03 g/gal from the Chevron gasoline and 1.86±0.09 g/gal from the 76 Station. Due to the fact that the concentrations of toluene are so close, we have determined that toluene is a very common octane booster in most types of gasoline.