Cordain wrote: <snip>
>Is anyone on this list already in commercial production. If so do you have a >gas chromo on your premises are have your contracted with lab to do your >testing. I'm not liscensed to fly one of those things, just curious to see >how ASTM standards are met. Hi Cordain This could be the way to go: ... Until now, the standard for measuring biodiesel quality has been a complex analytical method called gas chromatography, or simply GC. "But GC is a complex piece of laboratory equipment, requiring technical expertise and at least an hour to perform," said Gerhard H. Knothe, an ARS chemist in Peoria, Ill. Another drawback of GC is it requires chemical reagents and solvents that need special handling and costly disposal. Knothe has developed a safer and faster way to check the quality of biodiesel fuel by using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR). Much of the pioneering work on biodiesel fuels began where Knothe works, at ARS' National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research. "NIR is a nifty tool also used for determining fatty acid composition in vegetable oils and oil content in seeds," said Knothe. Another plus: No special training is needed to perform the NIR test... You just stick an optic-fibre probe in your biod and that's it. It needs a one-off GC baseline test for comparison. NIR Helps Turn Vegetable Oil into High-Quality Biofuel -- ARS News Release, June 15, 1999 http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/NIR.html Dr Knothe sent me these papers on his work, now uploaded: Rapid Monitoring of Transesterification and Assessing Biodiesel Fuel Quality by Near-infrared Spectroscopy Using a Fiber-Optic Probe, by Gerhard Knothe, JAOCS 76, 795-800 (July 1999) http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/NIR1.html Monitoring a Progressing Transesterification Reaction by Fiber-Optic Near Infrared Spectroscopy with Correlation to 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, by Gerhard Knothe, JAOCS 77, 489-493 (May 2000) http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/NIR2.html He also said: "Probably the most time-consuming and relatively complex part of NIR is developing the method and preferably verifying against another analytical method (GC) with biodiesel that meets standards. After that, it should be straightforward. As you indicate, please direct any questions regarding that matter (I assume that would probably generate the most) and any other inquiries to me and I will be happy to try to answer them. "Best regards, "Gerhard Knothe" So there you are. Best Keith Addison >cheers, >cordain >dulles, va Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://www.webconx.com/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
