Corrosion Behavior of Automotive Materials with Biodiesel: A Different Approach

The issue of material compatibility of biodiesel has been discussed by few researchers but the reported corrosion rates were alarmingly high. This study addresses the corrosion issue of biodiesel with automotive materials with a different but systematic approach following SAE J1747 standard. In earlier studies while conducting material compatibility studies with biodiesel, mention of any specific standard/s has not been generally observed. Earlier studies were conducted by storing the samples for a long time without any change of fuel. However in actual automotive application, change of fuel is always on a periodic basis due to consumption of fuel and the SAE standard recommends for the same. This difference has a significant effect on the material compatibility as this periodic change does not result in making the fuel particularly biodiesel more acidic which is otherwise when stored for a long time during the test period. Though the corrosion rate in biodiesel is more, over diesel but biodiesel has a relatively lower adverse impact on materials than what reported in literature. Corrosion behaviour was investigated over a period of 2880 h at 45 degrees C. The anxiety created due to earlier higher reported corrosion rates may get partially mitigated by this study.