Rapid forensic analysis of biodiesel: Potential use of FAME fingerprinting as fraud-detection tool
The shipping sector is increasingly using biofuels—such as fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), also known as biodiesel—to reduce its GHG emissions.
Concerns have arisen, however, regarding the legitimacy of biofuels and whether they are truly sustainable.
Industry bodies are seeing a rising number of cases mislabeling biofuels purported to be made from recycled oils and fats, while suspicions persist that they might be produced from cheaper and less sustainable virgin oils.
To address these concerns, FAME fingerprinting can be used as a potential tool to detect fraud in marine fuel supply chains and ensure biofuel authenticity.
By providing a physical validation method that complements existing certification schemes, FAME fingerprinting can help justify the green premium with genuine environmental benefits and safeguard the integrity of the marine fuels supply chain.
FAME fingerprinting is based on the principle that the fatty-acid profile of FAME is unique to its feedstock and can be preserved during feedstock transesterification to produce FAME.
The “fingerprint” can then be compared against a database of known fatty-acid profiles to identify the feedstock origin.
The Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation worked with VPS, which modified existing fuel-testing methods, to carry out sample analyses using a gas chromatograph with flame-ionization detection, an instrument commonly found in fuel test laboratories.
The analysis takes about an hour, comparable to the turnaround time for current marine fuel quality testing in the supply chain.
This method was tested on a variety of FAME samples from different suppliers, including virgin oils, used cooking oils, palm-oil mill effluent (POME), beef tallow and food waste and was able to identify the feedstock origins for each sample.
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