Influence of soybean biodiesel content on basic properties of biodiesel-diesel blends

The world tendency in last years is to restrict the use of fossil fuels and replace them partially or totally by renewable fuels. Accordingly. biodiesel is being studied as one of the main alternatives and the production and consumption of this pure biofuel and its binary blends with fossil diesel have been markedly grown. Thus, the present work evaluated the influence of biodiesel concentration on such blends when mixed to diesel in 5, 15, 25 and 50 volume percentages. For each blend, both methanol and ethanol bio-diesels were investigated. The biodiesel samples were physicochemically characterized. Their theological behavior was analyzed. It was observed that the biodiesel enrichment leads to an acceptable increase in the viscosity and to a decrease in the volatilization of the binary blends. The viscosity was also shown to be temperature-dependent, as well as the fatty acids chain length and unsaturation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.