Estimation of Pure-Component Properties of Biodiesel-Related Components: Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters

Common, nonspecialized group-contribution and corresponding-state models for the estimation of normal boiling point, critical data, vapor pressure, liquid density, dynamic viscosity, and surface tension are reviewed in view of their application to fatty acid ethyl esters to provide guidelines for practical application of these models in process engineering. As a result, these properties can be estimated in a satisfactory manner when choosing an appropriate model, showing minimum average absolute mean deviations of the normal boiling point below 5 K (3.4 K for saturated and 4.2 K for unsaturated components), those of the critical temperature below 3 K (2.3 K for saturated and 1.2 K for unsaturated components), those of the critical pressure in the region of 50 kPa (54 kPa for saturated and 2.1 kPa for unsaturated components), and minimum relative mean deviations of saturation pressures from 2% around the normal boiling point to 15% at extremely low pressures, those of liquid density below 1%, those of viscosity at a maximum of 7%, and those of surface tension around 2.4%.