Higher heating value (HHV) of vegetable oils, fats and biodiesels evaluation based on their pure fatty acids' HHV

Higher heating value (HHV) is an important property of a fuel, especially for vegetable oils, fats and their derivatives which are intended to replace petroleum fuels. There are lots of methods to evaluate the HHV of a fuel. In this paper, the HHV of vegetable oils, fats and their derivatives (biodiesels) is calculated by using the HHV of their pure fatty acids/methyl esters. The study reveals that, to be in a good agreement with the experimental values, the HHV of the neat compounds must be determined with the highest accuracy. With an error inferior to 2% by comparison to the experimental values, this work shows that the HHV of pure fatty acids or that of methyl esters can be judiciously used to calculate the HHV of the biofuels which they are the components.

► HHVs of pure fatty acids/methyl esters of biofuels are selected.
► Equations for the estimation of the HHV of pure fatty acids/methyl esters are put forward.
► They are then used to calculate the HHV of vegetable oils, fats and biodiesels.
► Comparison of computed HHVs with experimental ones gives average error inferior to 2%.