Eﬀect of Diﬀerent Alcohols and Palm and Palm Kernel (Palmist) Oils on Biofuel Properties for Special Uses Claudia Cristina Cardoso Bejan,* ,† Vinicius Guilherme Celante, ‡ Eusta ́ quio Vinicius Ribeiro de Castro, § and Va ̂ nya Ma ́ rcia Duarte Pasa ∥ † Departamento de Química, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Rua Dom Manoel de Medeiros, s/n, Dois Irmã os, 52171-900 Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil ‡ Instituto Federal de Educaç ã o, Ciê ncia e Tecnologia do Espírito Santo, Campus Aracruz, Avenida Maroba ́ , 248, Maroba ́ , 29192-733 Aracruz, Espírito Santo, Brazil § Departamento de Química, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Avenida Fernando Ferrari, 845, Goiabeiras, 29060-900 Vitoria, Espírito Santo, Brazil ∥ Fuel Laboratory, Departamento de Química, Instituto de Ciê ncias Exatas (ICEx), Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Avenida Antô nio Carlos, 6627, Pampulha, 31270-901 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais Brazil ABSTRACT: The properties of biodiesel are determined by its oleaginous composition and the alcohol used in the transesteriﬁcation. This study was performed using palm and palmist oils and methyl, ethyl, isopropyl, and benzyl alcohols to investigate their inﬂuence on the cold ﬂow properties, density, and viscosity of the resulting biofuel. The products were also characterized by 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analyses. Biofuel produced from palmist oil had diﬀerent properties compared to biofuel synthesized from palm oil because of its lower average chain length and lower content of unsaturation. Biodiesel produced with palmist oil and isopropyl alcohol had the lowest values of cold ﬁlter plugging point (CFPP) (−16 °C) and density (860 kg/m 3 ). The use of benzyl alcohol yielded a biofuel with high viscosity and density values that do not adhere to any international speciﬁcations for biodiesel. 1. INTRODUCTION There are many diﬀerent deﬁnitions and speciﬁcations for biodiesel in the world. The Brazilian (Resoluc ̧ ã o 14-ANP) and the U.S. (ASTM D6751) speciﬁcations deﬁne biodiesel as alkyl esters of long-chain fatty acids derived from vegetable oils and animal fats. According to the resolutions, the type of alcohol used for the transesteriﬁcation reaction is not speciﬁed. The European biodiesel speciﬁcation (EN 14214) is more restrictive and applies the deﬁnition of biodiesel only to monoalkyl esters made with methanol, the fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs). Studies of biofuel using superior alcohols, including benzyl alcohols, have rarely been performed, possibly because of the restrictive speciﬁcations cited. Despite this alcohol restriction imposed by the European speciﬁcation for biodiesel, perhaps because of the toxicity and also the fact that methanol is not a renewable commodity, the transesteriﬁcation reaction has been performed with diﬀerent alcohols, such as ethanol and isopropanol, with the aim to improve the cold ﬂow properties of biodiesel fuel. 1,2 Ethanol has been widely studied, especially in Brazil and Spain, 3 because it is renewable, with low environmental impact, and can be produced from agricultural resources. 4−6 Although isopropyl alcohol is used instead of ethanol to further improve the cold ﬂow properties of biodiesel in soybean transesteriﬁcation, this alcohol is signiﬁcantly more expensive, thereby causing some restrictions to its use on a large scale. 1 Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, there is no report in the literature on the use of benzyl alcohol in biofuel production, despite its low cost. In the present study, the use of benzyl alcohol was investigated with the aim to evaluate the eﬀect of the aromatic ring on the biofuel properties. The study is motivated by the fact that many aromatic additives are used in biodiesel fuel as a pour point depressant and thermal stabilizer because these aromatics are known to be more thermally stable than paraﬃn. 7 The overall properties of the biodiesel fuel also depend upon the individual characteristics of the fatty esters present at the triacylglyceride content of the vegetable oil or animal fat used during the transesteriﬁcation process. Structural parameters of some fatty esters, such as chain length, degree of unsaturation, and branching, are important to biodiesel properties. Hoekman et al. discussed that the use of feedstock composed primarily of a medium-chain fatty acid, such as lauric acid, or unsaturated fatty acids, such as oleic or linoleic acid, is adequate to improve the cold ﬂow properties of biodiesel fuel. 8 Palm oil is one of the most abundant oils in the world, with a production of 4.2 tons ha −1 year −1 , which is higher than the production of soybean (0.3 tons ha −1 year −1 ). 9 The fruit from the palm tree can be divided into mesocarp and endocarp. The oil produced from the endocarp is named palmist (or palm kernel) and is composed of medium-chain fatty acids, such as lauric acid (C12:0), whereas palm oil is extracted from the mesocarp is composed primarily of palmitic (C16:0) and oleic (C18:1) acids in approximately a 1:1 ratio. While palm oil has Received: April 7, 2014 Revised: June 25, 2014 Published: June 27, 2014 Article pubs.acs.org/EF © 2014 American Chemical Society 5128 dx.doi.org/10.1021/ef500776u | Energy Fuels 2014, 28, 5128−5135