THERMAL CHARACTERIZATION OF JATROPHA BASED BIODIESEL BLEND WITH FOSSIL DIESEL USING TGA

Application of Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to the renewable energy sources has becoming popular in recent year. TGA is commonly used to determine selected characteristics of material that exhibit either mass loss or gain due to oxidation or decomposition. Investigations on alternative fuels are conducted due to several reasons such as environmental pollution and global warming, increasing cost and the predicted reduction on conventional petroleum-derived fuel. Jatropha curcas is a nut belonging to the Euphorbiaceae family. It is cultivated in central and south America, South East Asia, India and Africa. In Malaysia, Wild Jatropha curcas tree is also known as jarak pagar particularly in Peninsular Malaysia area. Jatropha curcas tree which can easily be propagated by cutting is widely planted as a hedge to protect the field’s erosion, as it is not browsed by cattle. In this project purpose is to study thermal characterization of Jatropha based biodiesel blend with fossil diesel by using TGA. Therefore, Jatropha Curcas biodiesel blends with Fossil Diesel at different percentages are exposed to isothermal heating under Nitrogen Gaseous with 20ml/min flow rate. The experiment used TGA with constant heating rate of 10°C/min from ambient temperature until 800 °C. However, the result stated that the mixed biodiesel had two stages decomposition, first decomposition is a diesel and second decomposition is Jatropha Curcas Biodiesel. The percentage rates of the biodiesel influence the second stage of the decomposition.