Author:

Abstract:

ure Plant Oil (PPO) is an interesting highly green biofuel, especially useful for heavy duty vehicles, such as lorries, auto cars, but also for energy production. Europe promotes growing rapeseed on idle agricultural land in order to produce rapeseed oil. At the same time decentralised oil pressing is stimulated by special tax regimes. This implies pressing operations by individual farmers or/and agricultural cooperations. PPO has tight quality specifications when used as an automotive fuel. Harvesting, conservation of the seeds and the actual pressing operation itself can have a large impact on PPO quality. A set of quick tests has been developed in order to monitor the pressing operation. The same kit can be used as a quick quality check on traded PPO. The tests are designed to monitor important parameters such as water content, free acid content and the sum of the Ca and Mg content. A somewhat more elaborate P-test has also been designed and will be discussed. The test kit comprises sealed reagents tubes, devices for the introduction of the oil samples and a simple handheld spectrometric device that was constructed for this actual purpose. It allows quantitative measurements for the sum of Ca and Mg. The water and free acid test give an indication whether the corresponding value exceeds the specification. All tests will be compared with the standard PPO-tests. Using the results of the quick tests, an overview of different oil grades will be discussed and also the use of the quick-test for monitoring a simple refining process, that was designed in order to correct “out of specification” batches. This simple refining process can be operated on the same site where pressing operations are running. Use of the quick-test for other oils will be discussed, as well as its use for monitoring biodiesel (FAME).