Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Back to the OSAC Lexicon

Petroleum Distillate

A class of ignitable liquid characterized in ASTM E1618-11 as having a predominant pattern associated with a homologous series of normal-alkanes in a Gaussian distribution of peaks. Light petroleum distillates may not exhibit a recognizable pattern and may contain only one or two of the normal-alkanes. There will also be cyclic alkanes and branched alkanes present. Lesser levels of aromatic hydrocarbons as well as condensed ring aromatics may be found mostly in the medium and heavy sub-classes. Some distillates have significantly reduced or completely absent aromatics. These are sometimes referred to as dearomatized distillates.

Date Added to Lexicon
Standard Source (Designation Number Title of Standard. Publisher, Place, Year.)
ANSI/ASTM E1618-11 Standard Test Method for Ignitable Liquid Residues in Extracts from Fire Debris Samples by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry. ASTM International, 100 Barr Harbor Drive, West Conshohocken, PA 19428, 2011. Source link
Reprinted, with permission, from ASTM, copyright ASTM International, 100 Barr Harbor Drive, West Conshohocken, PA 19428. A copy of the complete standard may be purchased from ASTM International, https://www.astm.org