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Title: PRECOMBUSTION CHEMISTRY OF VEGETABLE OIL-BASED BIOFUELS

Author
item PIOCH, DANIEL - CIRAD-CP,MONTPELLIER,FR
item CHIRAT, NATHALIE - CIRAD-CP MONTPELLIER,FR
item LOZANO, PAUL - CIRAD-CP MONTPELLIER,FR
item GRAILLE, JEAN - CIRAD-CP MONTPELLIER,FR
item RYAN, THOMAS - SWRI SAN ANTONIO,TX
item Knothe, Gerhard

Submitted to: Annual Meeting and Expo of the American Oil Chemists' Society
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/13/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Despite the differences between the chemical composition of standard diesel fuel and that of vegetable oils, the latter are also suitable as diesel fuels. This led us to investigate the effect of the precombustion chemistry of a vegetable oil-based biofuel. The work is based on injecting the fuel into a high-pressure, high-temperature combustion chamber. The gases are collected before ignition begins and then analyzed by gas chromatography - mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This preliminary work allowed the identification of the main classes of compounds under various experimental conditions (temperature and pressure) for the biofuels and a diesel fuel as well as a comparison of physico chemical properties of the products (ignition temperatures of individual compounds) to fuel properties. Ignition delays are in the same range for triglycerides compared to the diesel fuel despite the significant changes in the composition of the precombustion gases.