Determination of Palm Based Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) Content in Diesel Sylvia Ayu Bethari (a,b), Handajaya Rusli (a*), Muhammad Bachri Amran (a)
a) Analytical Chemistry Research Division, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia
b) Testing Center for Oil and Gas ^LEMIGAS^, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Republic of Indonesia
*handajaya[at]itb.ac.id
Abstract
Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is renewable fuel obtained from the hydrotreatment process of triglycerides palm oil. HVO is potent blending compound because of its similar chemical structure to diesel fuel. The similarity between HVO and diesel fuel on the other hand will make it difficult to test HVO in diesel oil. Determination of the amount of HVO in diesel fuel can be used to ensure that the fuel mixture meets diesel quality specifications. In this research, an analytical method using the GC- FID is developed, and GC-MS is used to conform the structure. Chromatogram of diesel fuel and HVO are significantly different to each other with unique peaks that indicate their main component hydrocarbon. The two peaks with retention time around 17.5 - 17.7 minutes as preliminary identification of the diesel fuel and in the mixture. Peak^s ratio of heptadecane to pentadecane-2,4,6,10-tetramethyl is 1.24 in diesel fuel, whereas heptadecane is found in B0 and HVO also. The mixture of 0-40 %v/v of HVO in diesel blend has excellent linear regression to HVO heptadecane^s peak shown by R2 = 0.9997. The method is applicable to the determination of HVO in diesel mixture with %recovery 96 - 105%.
