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Hydrogen donors for the stabilization of biodiesel fuel at elevated temperature:
1 THQ: 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline;
2 - tetralin (1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene);
3 - t-decalin (trans-decahydronaphthalene)
Image by Internetchemistry.com
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Biodiesel - which can be prepared from vegetable oil, animal fats, used cooking oil, or microalgae - is a potential replacement or extender for petroleum-based diesel fuel. Biodiesel offers several advantages, including renewability, the potential for domestic production, biodegradability, and decreased emissions of carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Biodiesel also has several serious disadvantages, including increased nitrogen oxide emissions and chemical instability, especially at higher temperatures. Antioxidants often are added to vegetable oils to retard oxidation during storage. The NIST work may be the first to enhance stability of biofuel at high temperatures, Bruno said. The study focused on three compounds, THQ, t-decalin and tetralin, that help neutralize highly reactive “free radicals” formed at temperatures above 300 degrees C. Test results showed that all three compounds stabilized biodiesel. As expected from studies of aviation fuels, THQ and t-decalin perform similarly and outperform tetralin. For solutions containing 1 percent additive, THQ performed best overall. A distillation curve charts the percentage of a mixture that evaporates as a sample is slowly heated. Because the different components of a complex mixture typically have different boiling points, a distillation curve gives a good measure of the relative amount of each component. NIST chemists enhanced the traditional technique by improving precision and control of temperature measurements and adding the capability to analyze the chemical composition of each boiling fraction. To adapt the method for unstable fluids such as biodiesels, the authors made repeated distillation curves of samples and quantified the variation in parameters such as temperature for each distillate fraction across the different runs of the experiment. These data were averaged over the entire distillation curve to identify the range of variations that might occur. This range was extended to theoretically model the potential oxidative and thermal decomposition of the samples.
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