I bought a HP 1090 Liquid Chromatograph and was wondering if anyone has any experience in using one of these for testing BD. Any details or links with respect to what particular mobile phase and columns are best/commonly used for BD testing would be appriciated.

Hi TDIguy2,

The common test for biodiesel using chromatograpy follows ASTM method D6584. It uses gas chromatography (GC) and a flame ionization detector (FID) to determine conversion quality by quantifying the unreacted glycerides (monos, dis, tris) as well as remaining "free" glycerine. The EN spec for biodiesel utilizes EN method 14103 to determine the percent mass of methyl esters in the sample as well as speciation of the esters using GC.

I am not aware of any test protocols for biodiesel, either to the US ASTM standard or to the European EN standard that use liquid chromatograpy - although they may well exist.

Bob in Kumasi

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Interesting article on HPLC for BD. I have operated both an HP 1090 HPLC and a HP 5890 GC. My choice for BD would be the GC. The LC would be easier, but as the article said, you need two detectors (we had only the DAD (UV) detector on ours). The HPLC would certainly be cheaper to operate, but the MS detector is expensive. We had a FID on the GC. If you get the HPLC working, let me know how it works .

I'm not sure if this would help. In 1981 in organic research lab we used methylene chloride as a HPLC mobile phase. I collected the methylene chloride from a big barrel in the solvent shed, put a drying agent in it and distilled it a gallon at a time. I suppose it was cheaper to dry it just prior to use than to buy ultra-pure solvents from Fischer or some chemical company. I don't know what the stationary phase was. A problem with testing biodiesel with column chromatograpy, is water of course, but potassium sticking at the head of the column. I expect the biodiesel sample injected into the head of the column ought to be very pure or it might clog the column eventually.

I don't know if this might help. There's a book titled Practical Liquid Chromatography, written by Perry and others, published by plenum press, 1972, 1974, & 1976, ISBN number 0-0306-30548-8. It gives lots of helpful information. I read it years ago.