Experimental and empirical study of diesel and biodiesel produced from blend of fresh vegetable and waste vegetable oil on density, viscosity, sulphur content and acid value

Abstract

Not quite long, researchers are motivated to explore the mixture of edible and inedible oils to improve fuel properties and reduce the cost of biodiesel production. Even though the tropics are renowned for abundant waste vegetable oil (WVO) generated from restaurant and food processing and frying shops, the fresh vegetable oil (FVO) seems to cause competition between food and fuel utilization if explored for biodiesel production. The current study attempted to derive one-dimensional models to determine key fuel characteristic of hybrid biodiesel-diesel fuel blends.Hybrid vegetable oil methyl ester (HVOME), which has been produced through alkaline transesterification was analyzed for important fuel properties and blended with diesel fuel (DF)) at 10, 20 and 40 on a volume basis. Standard methods as specified by (ASTM D6751) standards and the European standards (EN 14214) used. The effects of temperature and biodiesel content were investigated on viscosity were. Statistical regression technique was employed to derive one-dimensional models. The models were further adopted to correlate basic fuel properties with biodiesel blends. The kinematic viscosity, flash point and acid value increased while sulphur content decreased with increasing biodiesel fraction in HVOME-diesel blends. The kinematic viscosity of fuel blends decreased with the increasing temperature. The empirical models show high regression value (R2) between properties and HOVME-DF blend. In conclusion, the results of this study can be adopted for thermophysical property collection for hybrid feedstocks’ utilization and guide for regression modelling in biodiesel fuel industry.