High water content is one of the most concerning issues when implementing biodiesel as a diesel fuel blend. Vacuum heating is one of several methods to reduce the water content of biodiesel, at certain conditions, it may damage the stability of biodiesel. This study aims to understand the stability of biodiesel including water content, total acid number, and oxidation stability under vacuum heating process. The three stability parameters were tested according to ASTM D6304, ASTM D664, and EN 15751, respectively. Biodiesel with high water content was heated under a vacuum pressure of -720 mmHg. The heating temperature and time were varied to determine the effect of both variables on the stability of biodiesel. The result shows that higher heating temperature produces lower water content and higher reduction of oxidation stability. Similar effects were also observed at a longer heating time. However, either temperature or time variations gave no noticeable effect on the acid number, while oxidation stability can be maintained above 22 hours. The results of this study can be used as a recommendation in determining the limits of acceptable operating conditions in the biodiesel vacuum heating process.
Acetalyzation of glycerol with acetone has been carried out using Basolite F300 as catalyst. Heterogeneous catalysis reaction model was employed and Langmuir Hinshelwood mechanism was simulated and validated to the experimental data. The experiment was conducted at varying temperature (30 – 55°C) with an initial molar ratio of glycerol to acetone of 1:4, agitation speed of 700 rpm and catalyst loading of 1% (w/w glycerol). The agitation speed of 700 rpm was sufficient to neglect the external mass transfer as the rate controlling step.The results showed that glycerol conversion as high as 83.33 % was obtained from one hour reaction time. The glycerol conversion was simulated and the results were compared with experimental data in a temperature range of 30°C to 55°C. From mathematical model, it was found that the pre-exponential factor of 0.0149 min–1 and activation energy of 15.7085 kJ.mole–1. Comparison of experimental data and calculation results showed that the proposed mathematical model was adequately able to approach the experimental data within the temperature range under investigation. Thermodynamics analysis on the ketalization resulted in ΔS°, ΔH° and ΔG° which values were 0.0834 kJ.mole–1 K–1, -29.7176 kJ.mole–1 and -4.8675 kJ.mole–1, respectively.
Implementing a 20% biodiesel blend in diesel fuel (B20) has been launched since January 1th, 2016, and it was increased to 30% (B30) on January 1th, 2020, implemented in all sectors, including power generators. Gas turbines utilized as power generators designed to use natural gas or diesel fuel as fuel. Therefore, a study to use biodiesel blend as fuel in gas turbines was required. A comparative study was conducted to analyze the fuel requirements of General Electric’s (GE) Heavy Duty (HD) Gas Turbine specification compared to either of SNI 7182: 2015 and EN 14214 specifications. An assessment was conducted on samples of two biodiesel quality levels called biodiesel and distilled biodiesel to meet the GE HD Gas Turbine’s requirements. This study indicates that the biodiesel quality standards, both SNI 7182: 2015 and EN 14214, are insufficient to meet the gas turbine fuel specifications of the GE HD gas turbine. It is required a more specific quality standard dedicated to gas turbines. On the other hand, among the two samples, distilled biodiesel fulfills the fuel requirements of GE HD gas turbines and might be utilized as fuel for this type of gas turbine. According to the result of this study, a test run of 100% biodiesel (B100) as gas turbine fuel can be proposed to be implemented immediately.
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