Material-Biodiesel Compatibility – Survey of Industry Experience

Abstract The regulation in Canada requires that, starting from 2011, the renewable fuel content in diesel is at least 2%. Similar USA requirements resulted in the production of more than 1.5 billion gallons of biodiesel in 2009. Several other countries also produce large amount of biodiesel. Two surveys were conducted in 2011 to understand the industry knowledge and experience with respect to the use of biodiesel. This paper summarizes the salient features from these surveys. This paper additionally focuses on material-biodiesel interaction at various stages between the production of biodiesel and usage. The main findings from these surveys include, Based on the experience gained so far, no major incident of material incompatibility with biodiesel of concentration up to 5% has been reported.Incidents of corrosion and microbiological influenced corrosion have been experienced in the presence of accumulated water; however the incidences are not higher than those experienced in the presence of petroleum diesel alone.No new issues of high-temperature corrosion have been reported in using up to 20% of biodiesel under automotive operating conditions.Materials (both metals and non-metals) that are incompatible with raw biodiesel (B100) have been established and, to a certain extent, are avoided in handling fuels containing biodiesel.