Winterization studies of different vegetable oil biodiesel

At low temperature, the presence of oleaginous compound with fatty acids bound to crystallize and cause operability problems with compression engines. In this present investigation, seven different fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) biodiesel from vegetable oils (such as sunflower, coconut, jatropha, rice bran, palm, neem and mahua) were prepared by transesterification and were analyzed by gas chromatography (GC). Winterization of these synthesized biodiesel were carried out to find their usability at low temperatures (0 °C-20 °C) and the crystals formed were separated. Further, the differential scanning colorimetry (DSC) was employed to identify the onset of melting point of the biodiesel from vegetable oils. The results showed that crystal formation was observed for various biodiesel except sunflower oil that recorded no crystal formation with minimum temperature of 0 °C. These findings suggest that biodiesel synthesized from sunflower can be used as such at low temperatures compared to the other synthesized biodiesel from vegetable oil.