Palm Biodiesel Research Paper

3.3 Characteristics of Biodiesel

The quality of palm biodiesel produced in this work was observed for its physical and chemical parameters as presented in Table 2. The density, acid value, flash point, and cetane number of PO biodiesel were all within Indonesian, US, and European limits for biodiesel. The viscosity of PO biodiesel 40°C was 4.5-5.8 mm2/s which is slightly higher than European standard for biodiesel, but within the limit for Indonesian and US biodiesel. Viscosity has been the most crucial property of biodiesel since its effect on the fluidity of the fuel determines the fuel injection system, particularly at low temperature.

The mid-IR technique has been shown as a rapid, precise and accurate tool to determine the quality of biodiesel [29,30]. The FTIR spectra in the mid-infrared region have been used to determine the functional groups and the bonds corresponding to various stretching and bending vibrations in the samples of oil and biodiesel. Fig. 8 shows that the spectra of origin oil and the palm oil biodiesel produced in this work are nearly identical indicating insignificant change of chemical or functional bonds. The local extreme condition due to microwave effect did not runway the reaction. The triglyceride was broken down into fatty acid ethyl esters and

These specific peaks are expected to appear at around 1400, 1650, and 3005 cm-1. The last two bands can be observed in Fig. 8. Perkin Elmer’s note [32] reports comparison of FTIR spectra of biodiesel derived from palm, rapeseed, and soybean oils which shows the intensities of alkene functional groups increase in the order palm < rapeseed < soy. It is consistent with the FTIR data, the ratio of double bonds per chain to average chain length (representing the volume density of double bonds) increases in the order palm < rapeseed <