An Honour’s student that I supervise presented an excellent poster at this year’s Research Week at Bishop’s University: Characterization of Biodiesels and Vegetable Oils and their Corresponding Combustion Residues.
Here is the abstract
Biodiesel is one of the most common alternative fuels and is becoming more predominant on the market today. Due to the emergence of biodiesel forensic analysts should be more aware of biodiesel components and properties since it may be encountered more in arson crime scene samples. Biodiesels are vegetable oil or animal oil based diesel fuels. Vegetable oils themselves undergo burning, self-heating, and spontaneous ignition which means they too, albeit less often, are observed in fire debris samples. Vegetable oils and fuels derived from them are not effectively analyzed using regular fire debris analysis methods. A solvent extraction is more suitable than the typical passive headspace extraction that is used for ignitable liquids. The vegetable oils must also be derivatized in order to convert the fatty acids (FAs) found in the oils to the volatile fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) which are necessary for GC-MS analysis. This work will demonstrate and analyze the changes, if any, in the FAME components that are observed between neat and burned alternative fuel accelerants. Biodiesel blends and multiple household oils, such as soy and canola oils, will be used as the accelerants. The findings of this research will aid in further understanding and in recognition of biodiesels and vegetable oils in fire debris.
Download the poster (pdf, 2 MB): ksaunders-gkos_biodiesel2015
