Effect of incompletely converted soybean oil on biodiesel quality

Presence of fully converted monoalkyl esters is the major requirement in quality biodiesel. Due to high associated costs with testing and widespread production of biodiesel not only in commercial scale but also in small scale, there is a high propensity of substandard biodiesel entering the market and being used in compression ignition engines. Due to this reason, it is important to understand how low grade biodiesel with a lower methyl ester conversion affects the parameters of quality standards and as a result, engine performance and durability. In this paper, the performance of fatty acid methyl esters with different proportions of unconverted triglycerides has been evaluated. The study has comprehensively evaluated the effect of unconverted triglycerides on flash point, water and sediment, kinematic viscosity, sulfur content, sulfated ash, copper strip corrosion, cetane number, cloud point, carbon residue, acid number, free glycerin, total glycerin, phosphorus content and distillation temperature.