Mixing stability of biodiesel blends / Dr. Ahmad Rafizan Mohamad Daud ...[et al.]

Nowadays, with the rise of energy consumption demands, high greenhouse emission and a need to find a new renewable energy and we have started to venture into biodiesel manufacturing where made from transesterification of triglyceride feedstock. This includes oil-bearing crops, animal fats, and algal lipids. Example of popular biodiesel that had been commercialised was, soybean from United States, rapeseed oil from Europe and palm oil in southeast Asia (Hoekman, Broch, Robbins, Ceniceros, & Natarajan, 2012). Biodiesel becomes a lot more popular for some of its properties such as, biodegradable, sustainable and also environmentally beneficial, thereby providing lower gas emission profile. Based on a research by (Ferella, Mazziotti Di Celso, De Michelis, Stanisci, & Veglio, 2010) mentioned that jatropha curcas, rape plant and palm trees absorb greater amount of carbon-dioxide than that contributed to the atmosphere when used as fuel in diesel engines. It is also stated that biodiesel has similar physiochemical properties to that of diesel produced from crude oil and can be used directly to run existing diesel engines without major modifications or as a mixture with petroleum diesel and produces less harmful gas emission such as sulphur oxide. However, the direct use of vegetable oil as fuel in compression ignition engines is problematic due to their high viscosity ( about 11-17 times greater than diesel fuel) and low volatility. They do not bum completely and form carbon deposits in the fuel injectors of diesel engines. Transesterification can further improve the vegetable oils viscosity by lowering their viscosity and enhancing their physiochemical properties.