Chemically, vegetable and animal oils and fats are triglycerides, glycerol bound to three fatty acids. Animal fat such as tallow or lard is saturated, meaning that in the fatty acid portion, all the carbon atoms are bound to two hydrogen atoms, and there are no double bonds. This allows the chains of fatty acids to be straighter and more
pliable so they harden at higher temperatures (that's why lard is a solid).
As you increase the number of double bonds in a fatty acid, you reduce that ability for oils to gain a conformation that would make them solid, so they remain liquid. To picture it, imagine that you put a bunch of strings in a line. Now tie knots in various places on the strings and see how they don't fit together tightly.
To test a vegetable oil to see how many double bonds it has (how unsaturated it is) iodine is introduced to the oil. The iodine will attach itself over a double bond to make a single bond where an iodine atom is now attached to each carbon atom in that double bond. Higher iodine numbers do not refer to the amount of iodine in the oil, but rather the amount of iodine needed to "saturate" the oil, or break all the double bonds. Oils for the most part contain only trace amounts of iodine naturally.
How does this translate to biodiesel? When the fatty acid chains are broken from the glycerol and then re-esterified to methyl or ethyl groups, those fatty acids still have their double bonds. That means that the more double bonds, the lower the cloud point because they resist solidifying at lower temperatures. So, for instance, if you use lard or tallow, the biodiesel will solidify at a higher temperature because the fat it was formed from also solidified at a higher temperature.
from: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
The information below refers to straight vegetable oil fuel, but is also useful to show which oils are suitable for making biodiesel and which may not be suitable.
Many vegetable oils and some animal oils are 'drying' or 'semi-drying' and it is this which makes many oils such as linseed, tung and some fish oils suitable as the base of paints and other coatings. But it is also this property that further restricts their use as fuels.
Drying results from the double bonds (and sometimes triple bonds) in the unsaturated oil molecules being broken by atmospheric oxygen and being converted to peroxides. Cross-linking at this site can then occur and the oil irreversibly polymerises into a plastic-like solid.
In the high temperatures commonly found in internal combustion engines, the process is accelerated and the engine can quickly become gummed-up with the polymerised oil. With some oils, engine failure can occur in as little as 20 hours. The traditional measure of the degree of bonds available for this process is given by the 'Iodine Value' (IV) and can be determined by adding iodine to the fat or oil. The amount of iodine in grams absorbed per 100 ml of oil is then the IV. The higher the IV, the more unsaturated (the greater the number of double bonds) the oil and the higher is the potential for the oil to polymerise.
While some oils have a low IV and are suitable for use as fuel without any further processing other than extraction and filtering, the majority of vegetable and animal oils have an IV which may cause problems if used as a neat fuel. Generally speaking, an IV of less than about 25 is required if the neat oil is to be used for long term applications in unmodified diesel engines and this limits the types of oil that can be used as fuel. The table below lists various oils and some of their properties.
The IV can be easily reduced by hydrogenation of the oil (reacting the oil with hydrogen), the hydrogen breaking the double bond and converting the fat or oil into a more saturated oil which reduces the tendency of the oil to polymerise. However this process also increases the melting point of the oil and turns the oil into margarine.
As can be seen from the table below, only coconut oil has an IV low enough to be used without any potential problems in an unmodified diesel engine. However, with a melting point of 25 deg C, the use of coconut oil in cooler areas would obviously lead to problems. With IVs of 25-50, the effects on engine life are also generally unaffected if a slightly more active maintenance schedule is maintained such as more frequent lubricating oil changes and exhaust system decoking. Triglycerides in the range of IV 50-100 may result in decreased engine life, and in particular to decreased fuel pump and injector life. However these must be balanced against greatly decreased fuel costs (if using cheap, surplus oil) and it may be found that even with increased maintenance costs this is economically viable.
