Reference Materials for Biofuel Specifications

BIOREMA
Within the framework of an EC funded project with the acronym BIOREMA (Project no. 219081, DG TREN), REference MAterials for BIOfuel specifications, possible reference materials for bio-ethanol and biodiesel are being investigated. The aim of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of preparing and characterizing reference materials for biofuels. The focus is on providing SI-traceable reference values. Further, the project will establish the current state of measurement quality by means of interlaboratory comparisons using these test materials.

Introduction
With the introduction of the European Directives on renewable energies (RED 2009/28/EC) and on fuel quality (FQD 2009/30/EC), and with the increased addition of biological products to gasoline and diesel, e.g. bio-ethanol and FAME, the quality of these products is becoming more important. There is, however, up to now no international consensus on the technical specifications of biofuels. Neither is it clear what measurement procedures, reference materials and measurement techniques are needed.

Needs
Reference materials for biofuels with well-characterized property values are essential for the development and validation of measurement methods. Also, these materials are an important tool in quality assurance of the day-to-day measurements, i.e., in obtaining reliable, traceable measurement results.

Objectives
The main objective of the project is to establish the feasibility of the preparation of biodiesel and bio-ethanol reference materials with traceable reference values. To that end, test materials will be prepared and characterized for a selected number of parameters with high-level measurement methods. Additionally, the short-term as well as the long-term stability of the reference values will be assessed.
Another important objective is to evaluate the current quality of the measurement practice of field laboratories. Information on the quality (repeatability, reproducibility, bias of measurement) will be obtained from interlaboratory comparisons that are organized using the characterized test materials.

Organizations involved
• VSL (the Netherlands), project coordinator
• IRMM (European Commission)
• NPL (United Kingdom)
• INMETRO (Brazil)
• NIST (USA)
• LGC (United Kingdom)