Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Alley, Earl G.

Committee Member

Wipf, David O.

Committee Member

French, W. Todd

Date of Degree

5-3-2008

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Chemistry

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Chemistry

Abstract

Biodiesel is a renewable, biodegradable, clean burning fuel, produced from vegetable oils and animal fat. It is a mixture of fatty acid alkyl esters, products that result from the catalytic transesterification of lipids. The first part of this research describes the development of a new and direct method used to rapidly and quantitatively determine the amount of free methanol in biodiesel samples. The analytical method developed is different from the current standards for methanol determination, and it is the first headspace-SPME method used to extract methanol from biodiesel as matrix. The second part of this research describes the direct analysis of acetic acid and 2uraldehyde in an aqueous mixture using headspace SPME. The direct and accurate determination and quantitation of these two analytes is very important, as they can be inhibitors or food sources for microorganisms capable of producing lipids or ethanol.

Temporal Coverage

2000-2010

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/14875

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