Energy & Fuels, Vol.35, No.2, 1442-1448, 2021
Estimation of Cold Flow Properties of Biodiesel from Fatty Acid Composition
Cold flow properties are of great relevance to the quality of biodiesel, particularly in cold climates. However, sometimes the required measurement equipment is not available, or there are not enough samples for its determination in research work on obtaining biodiesel from raw materials such as lipids from microalgae. Therefore, in this work, empirical correlations were developed to estimate the cold filter plugging point, the cloud point, and the pour point, starting from the fatty acid composition of biodiesel. At least 60 experimental data taken from the literature were used for the development of each model plus 10 additional biodiesel data for its validation. The results obtained with the proposed models were compared against those of highly referred equations reported in the literature to estimate the considered properties. The coefficient of determination (R-2) and the root mean squared error were the statistical parameters used to evaluate the fit of the models to the experimental data. The results suggest that the proposed models are more accurate than the compared models for the three properties studied.