Abstract

EN 14103 is suitable to quantify the ester content in biodiesel free of heptadecanoate ester (C17:0), because it is employed as internal standard (IS). But EN 14103 cannot be applied to the analysis of tallow biodiesel because C17:0 is found in animal fats. This work proposes an improved method, based on EN 14103 capable to determine ester content in tallow biodiesel. Twenty samples from tallow, soybean, babassu and palm biodiesels and its blends were used to carry out the analysis. Chromatograms of ethylic biodiesel were analyzed using separately methylic and ethylic C17:0 (IS). The results showed that some peaks from tallow biodiesel coeluted with both IS peaks, confirming the impossibility to quantify ethylic esters using those standards. Despite this, in all analyzed samples it was observed a constant relationship between two neighbor peaks occurring naturally in the tallow samples. The rate between them was measured and applied as a correction factor to measure the real influence, caused on methylic C17:0 IS by natural C17:0. As a result, the original equation from EN 14103, modified by the introduction of a correction factor (F), resulted in another equation more adequate to analyze the ester content in tallow biodiesel and its blends. Pure tallow biodiesel presented ester content around 4.3% greater, when quantified using the equation containing the correction factor, instead of the original equation.

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