ABSTRACT
Introduction Four methods to reduce the high viscosity of vegetable oils to enable their use in common diesel engines without operational problems such as engine deposits have been investigated: blending with petrodiesel, pyrolysis, microemulsification (cosolvent blending), and transesterification (1). Transesterification is by far the most common method and will be dealt with in this chapter. Only the transesterification reaction leads to the products commonly known as biodiesel, i.e., alkyl esters of oils and fats. The other three methods are discussed in Chapter 10.
