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Rapeseed is currently cultivated as an industrial crop in Latvia as a source of oil rich biomass to contribute to renewable energy goals of the European Union. However, rapeseed oil can also be used as a feedstock biobased polyurethane production. Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry have developed polyols based on rapeseed oil and have developed biobased and volatile organic compounds-free polyurethane coatings. The main aim of this study was to present a Life Cycle Inventory of spring and winter rapeseed produced in Northern European country Latvia based on primary data of agricultural practices used in this region. The study was carried in accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. Data were collected from a large crop company in Latvia to ensure a specific and accurate data collection for the definition of the complete supply chain. The reference unit of this study was defined as 1 ha, time horizon 2008–2016, stages from the raw materials production to the seed harvesting were considered. The data presented will add to and expand the existing knowledge of rapeseed production in other European countries. Lastly, this paper is the first in a series of papers that will result in a complete Life Cycle Assessment for these develop polyurethane coatings based on rapeseed oil polyols to avoid black box unit process and provide transparent results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiesel is a renewable fuel that is commonly used in diesel engines around the world mostly in blends with the conventional diesel. There are many studies concerning its production and its properties and a series of them confirms the biodiesel advantages when compared with conventional diesel in relation of the environmental impacts. In spite of many advances concerning the biodiesel production and properties its behavior at low temperatures is worst than the conventional diesel, and, unfortunately, low temperature property information concerning fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) and the biodiesel is still scarce for researchers. This paper presents nine solid-liquid phase diagrams of FAEE binary mixtures to complement the studies of FAEE phase diagram previously reported. All of the phase diagrams have been determined using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and also modelled using both the Predictive UNIQUAC and the ideal solution models. The results have been shown good correlation between experimental and modelled data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiesel, a non-toxic biodegradable fuel from renewable sources such as vegetable oils, has been developed in order to reduce dependence on crude oil and enable sustainable development. The knowledge of phase equilibrium in systems containing compounds for biodiesel production is valuable, especially in the purification stage of the biodiesel. Nonetheless, the refining process of biodiesel and by-products can be difficult and can elevate the production costs considerably unless it has an appropriate knowledge about the phase separation behavior. In addition, the transesterification reaction yield for producing biodiesel depends upon several operation parameters e.g. the feed molar ratio oil-to-alcohol and the temperature. These parameters were analyzed through a thermodynamic analysis by direct Gibbs energy minimization method in this paper, with the purpose of calculating the chemical and phase equilibrium of some mixtures containing compounds found in biodiesel production. For this, optimization techniques associated with the GAMS ® 2.5 software were utilized and the UNIQUAC and NRTL models were applied to represent the non-idealities of the liquid phases. Also, binary interaction parameters of studied compounds were correlated for NRTL and UNIQUAC models by using the least squares principle. The results showed that the use of optimization techniques associated with the GAMS software are useful and efficient tools to calculate the chemical and phase equilibrium by minimizing the Gibbs energy. Moreover, a good agreement was observed in cases in which calculated data were compared with experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]