Chemical and physical properties of vegetable oil esters and their effect on diesel fuel performance

Abstract Chemical and physical characteristics of some compression-ignition fuels derived from vegetable oils are recorded and some relationships between them established. From consideration of the literature relating to spark-ignition engine performance and its dependence upon hydrocarbon fuel structure, guidelines are proposed for the chemical structure requirements of compression-ignition engine fuels derived from plant seed oils. The guidelines have proved successful in predicting the ignition quality of a range of vegetable oil fuels evaluated by means of a rapid ranking engine test method and have been further supported by cetane index calculations (carried out according to ASTM standard method D976) and by other recently published data.