Development of Ultrafast NMR Technologies to Determine Quantity and Quality of Vegetal Oil in Intact Seeds and In Reactions During Biodiesel Production

Enter multiple e-mails separated by comma.

The emission increase of greenhouse effect gases and the high petroleum prices have elevated the demand for renewable fuels. For diesel, the most used fuel in the country, the main option has been the use of vegetable oil and animal fat by-products. However, there are two major problems regarding the production of vegetal oils which could hinder the use of these products as fuel: the quality and the quantity of oils produced. Of all the cultivated species, only the palm oil has the needed productive and quality needed for this application. However, the palm oil is commercially cultivated only in the Amazonian Region due to its great demands of water. Thusly, there is a crescent and urgent demand for high productivity and high quality cultivars, for the other regions in the country, including the semi-arid region in the Northeast. For such, genetic improvement of commercial plants in order to obtain high levels of oil and high quality and/or identification and selection of plants which might present high oil productivity per hectare per year. In order to hold programs of genetic improvement and selection of new cultivars in a relatively short period of time, it's necessary to analyze the levels of oil tens of thousands of times. Thus, this project's goal is to develop a technology of ultrafast measures of quantity and quality of oils with techniques of low resistance NMR.

Status: Completed Start date: Wed Dec 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2010 Conclusion date: Fri Nov 30 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2012

Head Unit: Embrapa Instrumentation

Project leader: Luiz Alberto Colnago

Contact: luiz.colnago@embrapa.br