Analytical Sciences

Fast Determination of Biodiesel Content in Commercial Diesel/Biodiesel Blends by Using Digital Images and Multivariate Calibration

Mayara FERREIRA BARBOSA,* Danielle SILVA DO NASCIMENTO,** Marcos GRÜNHUT,** Hebertty VIEIRA DANTAS,* Beatriz S. FERNANDEZ BAND,** Mario C. UGULINO DE ARAÚJO,* and Matías INSAUSTI**

*Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Departamento de Química, Laboratório de Automação e Instrumentação em Química Analítica/Quimiometria (LAQA), Caixa Postal 5093, CEP 58051-970—João Pessoa, PB, Brazil
**Laboratorio FIA, INQUISUR (CONICET)—Departamento de Química, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Av. Alem 1253, B8000CPB, Bahía Blanca, Argentina

A new simple, rapid and inexpensive analytical method was developed to determine the biodiesel percentage in biodiesel/diesel blends through simple digital images of samples obtained by scanning with a commercial scanner. Soybean biodiesel and petroleum diesel samples were acquired from refineries currently in operation. There were prepared several mixtures within the range 1.5 to 12.0% of biodiesel in diesel oil, using the same procedure as is done in industry. The analytical signals were images recorded with a scanner. This data was decomposed with different color systems: RGB, HSV, HLS, CMYK and Grayscale. Chemometrics models based on color signals obtained from different mixtures of biodiesel/diesel were built. The quantification by using partial least squares (PLS) resulted in a RMSEP value for biodiesel of 0.9% (w/w); this load approximately 10-times smaller than the corresponding calibration range, with a correlation of 0.96 between predicted and reference values.

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