Biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester, FAME) feedstocks with the highest amount of sulfur (S) include greases obtained from restaurants, underground grease traps and waste water treatment plants.  When these lipid feedstocks are esterified to form FAME, the product typically has S levels that exceed the ASTM specification of 〈15 ppm.   To mitigate engine performance and emissions concerns caused by S in transportation fuels, analytical techniques developed to quantify and identify sulfur containing impurities in biodiesel were developed.  Those protocols have been continuously optimized to improve the extraction, mass balance and analytical characterization of the eluted sulfur-bearing species.  Gas chromatography-pulsed flamed photometric detector (GC-PFPD) methods used to separate the peaks of S-bearing species have been optimized. Those peaks were subsequently analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) detector methods whereby S-bearing compounds were identified by high probability matches in the MS chemical library.  Alternatively, S-bearing compounds were identified from the structural information obtained from MS fragmentation patterns or confirmed from the spectra of surrogate molecules synthesized for this purpose.<br/>

Optimization of analytical techniques used to quantify and identify sulfur-containing impurities in fatty acid methyl esters produced from brown grease

2019 Spring National Meeting

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