Quantitative analysis of biodiesel in blends of biodiesel and conventional diesel by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography and multivariate curve resolution

• Comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography was used to obtain the fatty acid methyl esters profile.
• Multiway principal component analysis was employed to aid variable selection.
• Modeling and prediction of the percentage composition of biodiesel and diesel blends was performed by multivariate curve resolution.
• The proposed methodology was successfully employed to predict the concentration of biodiesel and diesel blends regardless of the biodiesel's origin.

In this paper, a method to determine the composition of blends of biodiesel with mineral diesel (BXX) by multivariate curve resolution with Alternating Least Squares (MRC-ALS) combined to comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography with Flame Ionization Detection (GC × GC-FID) is presented. Chromatographic profiles of BXX blends produced with biodiesels from different sources were used as input data. An initial evaluation carried out after multiway principal component analysis (MPCA) was used to reveal regions of the chromatograms were the signal was likely to be dependent on the concentration of biodiesel, regardless its vegetable source. After this preliminary step MCR-ALS modeling was carried out only using relevant parts of the chromatograms. The resulting procedure was able to predict accurately the concentration of biodiesel in the BXX samples regardless of its origin.

Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slide