Characteristics of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emissions of palm-biodiesel blends

Abstract

Pure diesel fuel and biodiesel/diesel blends are widely used as important materials in manufacturing and transportation industries because of increasing industrialisation rate and consumption of energy worldwide. However, it causes environmental damages because of spills during their extraction, transportation, processing and distribution. The spill simulations with pure diesel and pure palm-biodiesel as well as their blends have been carried out in laboratory, aiming at analysing their polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The spill simulations with pure diesel and pure palm-biodiesel as well as their blends have been carried out in laboratory, aiming at analysing their polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by using chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis. Total 14 compounds of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were found in this study that known as toxicity potential stated by United States of Environmental Protection Agency. The results showed that higher proportion of biodiesel fuel in the mixture resulted lower amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Most of quantification limits obtained for all of these compounds exceeded the permitted limits recommended by Netherland, UK and Canada soil quality guidelines.

Keywords:

• PAHs
• Biodiesel/diesel-contaminated soil
• Extraction
• GC–MS
• Biodiesel/diesel blends
• Palm-based biodiesel

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Incentive Research Grant (Vote 1192), Research Acculturation Grant Scheme (Vote R002) and Multidiscipline Research Grant Scheme (Vote1104) from Research & Innovation Centre UTHM for financial supports of this work.