Classification of the content of methyl biodiesel of macaúba in the mixture with diesel, through the combination of analytical/chemometric techniques MIR spectroscopy and PLS-DA

Abstract

In recent decades, public policies have been developed to encourage the use of biofuels in Brazil, such as the establishment of a minimum mandatory content of biodiesel to commercialized diesel. In order to avoid adulterations in the composition of this blend established by law, a strict quality control is necessary throughout the entire production and distribution chain. In this perspective, researches can be promoted in order to develop methodologies that could provide fast and reliable answers for the qualitative control of this binary mixture. In this work, a model was proposed in order to classify the content of methyl biodiesel of macaúba in the mixture with diesel, using a combination of analytical / chemometric techniques of medium infrared spectroscopy (MIR) and Discriminant Analysis by Partial Least Squares (PLS-DA). This combination of techniques allowed a quickly and efficiently way to classify the samples of B10 and BX from the biodiesel / diesel mixture, offering the possibility of minimize the use of solvents and reagents. The mean quadratic errors obtained were low, with percentages within the reproducibility of the standardized method. The performance criteria obtained for the developed model, such as sensitivity, specificity, precision and efficiency, were equal to 100 %. The good performance obtained in this study, indicates that this kind of methodology is viable, and could be used by the inspection agencies in the quality control the of this fuel.