Development of the photothermal methodology and the instrumentation to monitor some parameters of quality of vegetal oils and biodiesel

• Grant number: 08/06100-9
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: November 01, 2008
• End date: October 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - Classical Areas of Phenomenology and Applications
• Principal Investigator: Washington Luiz de Barros Melo
• Grantee: Washington Luiz de Barros Melo
• Host Institution: Embrapa Instrumentação Agropecuária. Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA). Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento (Brasil). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

One of the great challenges in the production of biofuel is to assure its acceptable quality inside of the international standards. There is techniques diverse to evaluate fuels, but in its majority they are directed for the derivatives of petroleum, being only adapted for the use in biodiesel and some other oils. However, nor all the methodologies applied to specification of diesel are appropriated for evaluation of the quality of biodiesel. This project treats with the development of the instrument and the methodology based in the Helmholtz resonance and in the photothermal technique to monitor the quality of vegetal oils and of biodiesel. For this, resonant photothermal cells will be projected and constructed, similar to a Helmholtz resonator,being a hollow cylinder, a resonant tube and a piezoelectric sensor. The face frontal of the hollow cylinder will receive modulated intense white light, while in the back face it will have the piezoelectric sensor. When the hollow cylinder and the tube are full of liquid, making the scanning in frequency domain, one obtains the resonance spectum. Through the resonance's factor-Q the viscosity is possible to be determined, very important parameter for biodiesel, also other physics quantity. It is intended to arrive at a methodology and respective instrument that provide as fast qualitative as quantitative information. Other methods will be used for comparisons of the results and the experimental conditions applied to reach the objectives. (AU)