November 2007 Meeting

Global Warming, Biofuels and the High Temperature GC Analysis of  Biodiesel

The November 2007 CSSC meeting will be held at Lido's Restaurant in Meriden, CT.  The cost of the meeting is $25 ($15 Students and Emeritus) and is to be paid at the event.

The registration deadline is November 20.

To use the online system, you must be registered as a user.
Click here to become a registered user.

Click here for a printable version of this announcement

Abstract:  

This presentation will start with acknowledging that global warming is really upon us and that the mixing and/or substitution of certain biofuels with petroleum products do lessen our dependency on middle-East oil. Our future energy needs may depend on utilizing a combination of energy resources: petroleum, coal, solar (photovoltaic), fuel cells, geothermal, wave, water and wind power.  UCONN’s Alternate Energy Initiative and its Biofuel Consortium were established to coordinate CT’s major research university’s research, testing and outreach programs. One of UCONN’s most successful and on-going initiatives has been its biodiesel production and testing initiatives.  Since 2002, student projects have utilized used cooking oils, collected from UCONN’s dinning halls and local restaurants, and converting these waste oils into biodiesel (B-100).  To show that its biodiesel is of suitable quality to be mixed with petroleum diesel and used in UCONN’s shuttle buses and tractors, a series of American Society Testing Material’s (ASTM’s) methods have been implemented. Another part of this presentation will focus on the setting-up of the Biodiesel Testing Laboratory and report its successful participation in the ASTM’s Biodiesel Cross Check Program.  One of the most exacting ASTM tests involves a high temperature gas chromatographic method that in, a 30- minute run,  separates any  free glycerol (made as a by-product), the various methyl esters (referred to collectively as biodiesel or B-100), and various incompletely saponified mono-, di- along with the oil’s tri-glycerides in a single chromatographic run.  Methanol in the B-100 is determined by headspace gas chromatography.

Biography:

Dr. James Stuart retired in May, 2003 after teaching Analytical and Environmental Chemistry for 34 years in the Department of Chemistry of the University of Connecticut. Over those years he benefited by doing sabbatical leaves with Prof. L.B. (Buck) Rogers of MIT, Purdue then University of Georgia and Prof. Csaba Horváth of Yale University.  Since his retirement, Jim has worked as a chromatographic and fuel testing consultant. He remains active doing GC, GC/MS, LC and LC/MS as the Head of UCONN’s Dept of Chemistry’s Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry Support Group.  For the past five years, he has participated in an interdisciplinary UCONN initiative on Biofuels and helping students with the production and testing of biodiesel.  His contributions were recently acknowledged in April 2007 by being awarded a special Emeritus Leadership Award from UCONN’s Environmental Policy Advisory Council.  Jim has long (since 1982, the date of its founding) been a member, past president and now secretary to the CSSC.

Lido's restaurant
75 Poneroy Ave
Meriden, CT 06450
(203) 634-3959

Last Updated:  11/04/2007 10:58 PM