Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and

Environmental Effects

ISSN: 1556-7036 (Print) 1556-7230 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ueso20

Prediction of density and kinematic viscosity of

biodiesel by artificial neural networks

Ceyla Özgür & Erdi Tosun

To cite this article: Ceyla Özgür & Erdi Tosun (2017): Prediction of density and kinematic viscosity
of biodiesel by artificial neural networks, Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and
Environmental Effects, DOI: 10.1080/15567036.2017.1280563

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567036.2017.1280563

Published online: 29 Mar 2017.

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Download by: [Fudan University] Date: 29 March 2017, At: 11:47

ENERGY SOURCES, PART A: RECOVERY, UTILIZATION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567036.2017.1280563

Prediction of density and kinematic viscosity of biodiesel by

artificial neural networks
Ceyla Özgüra and Erdi Tosunb
a
Department of Automotive Engineering, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey; bDepartment of Mechanical
Engineering, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Environmental pollution is one of the biggest issues all over the world. For this ANN; biodiesel; density;
reason, researchers try to find alternative fuels for diesel engines, and biodiesel is kinematic viscosity;
the most profitable alternate fuel for diesel engines. In this study, biodiesel temperature
produced from cotton oil was used. The produced cotton oil biodiesel was
mixed with diesel fuel at volumetric fraction of 20, 30, 40, 50, and 75%.
Viscosity and density values at different temperatures for each fuel and blends
were determined experimentally. Then, artificial neural network technique was
used to predict viscosity and density. In this way, temperature and blend ratio
were used as input for prediction of fuel properties. To train network, 85% of
total data were used, and the remaining 15% of data were used to test predic-
tion performance of structure. Results were compared with linear regression
modelling. As a result, artificial neural network gave more accurate results than
linear regression and can be suggested as good a prediction method.

1. Introduction
Economic and industrial growth influences the depletion of natural sources, global warming, environ-
mental pollution, and waste disposal. These problems affect the human health and cause disasters. For
this reason, to produce clean, sustainable, safe, and renewable energy, green technologies and alternative
fuels are investigated by researchers. In this regard, biofuels like bioethanol, ethanol methanol, and
biodiesel have gained more attention according to renewable energy (Sajjadi et al., 2016).
Biodiesel is derived from edible and non-edible vegetable oils, animal oils, and waste oils (Hong et al.,
2014). In biodiesel production, transesterification chemical process is the most preferred method
(Rasimoğlu and Temur, 2014; Wong et al., 2015; Attia and Hassaneen, 2016). Triglycerides and short-
chain alcohol along with catalyst is used to generate mono-ester in this chemical reaction (Lin et al., 2009).
The most important advantages of biodiesel are it is biodegradable, non-toxic, renewable, and eco-friendly
compared with diesel fuel (Azam et al., 2005; Boz and Sunal, 2009; Ramírez-Verduzco et al., 2012). The fuel
properties of biodiesel widely rest on biodiesel resources (Sajjadi et. al., 2016). The most important
disadvantage of biodiesels is their high viscosity, and it causes pump resistance, filter damage, poor
combustion, and increased exhaust emissions (Ayetor et al. 2015).
Density is a significant property for diesel engines, which affects the performance characteristics of
engines and the other many performance characteristics like higher heating value. Cetane number is
correlated against density (Alptekin and Çanakçı, 2008; Tesfa et al., 2010). Furthermore, the amount of
fuel in the fuel injection systems is measured volumetrically, and the changes in density affect the engine
output power and fuel consumption (Enweremadu et al., 2011; Gülüm and Bilgin, 2015).

CONTACT Ceyla Özgür cgungor@cu.edu.tr Department of Automotive Engineering, Çukurova University, 01330 Adana,
Turkey.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ueso.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 C. ÖZGÜR AND E. TOSUN

There are many studies on the use of biodiesel in diesel engines so that the researchers focus on the
combustion process models of diesel engines fuelled with biodiesel. In the combustion models, the physical
properties of biodiesel are used as an input data. But in any studies, it may not be proper facilities to
measure the fuel properties of fuel blends in each blend ratio or temperature (Gülüm and Bilgin, 2015).
Determination of fuel properties is a very important issue in order to evaluate availability of
fuel in internal combustion engines. They can be found experimentally by various devices.
Alternatively, artificial intelligence techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN) can be
used to predict these properties when sufficient training data is supplied. ANN is a way that
provides a relationship between variables of interest. ANN needs solution examples in order to
learn something related with the problem. Once it learns, it can predict results when new data
comes (Kara-Togun and Bayseç, 2010). ANN has a good prediction capability even with small
number of database (Eryilmaz et al., 2015). Baroutian and Aroua (2008) used ANN to predict the
density of numerous vegetable oil–based ethyl ester biodiesel. Giwa et al. (2015) used ANN for
prediction of density, kinematic viscosity, cetane number, and flash point of biodiesel from fatty
acid composition. Eryilmaz et al. (2016) investigated the prediction of kinematic viscosity values of
hazelnut biodiesel by using ANN and empirical equations. They blended hazelnut biodiesel with
diesel fuel at volumetric fraction of 20, 40, 60, and 80%. They changed the temperature from
293.15 K to 373.15 K with 1 K interval.
In this study, cotton oil was used to produce biodiesel as a feedstock. Blends were prepared
with diesel fuel at volumetric ratio of 20, 30, 40, 50, and 75%. Diesel, cotton biodiesel, and 20, 30,
40, 50, and 75% blends were assigned as D, B100, B20, B30, B40, B50, and B75, respectively.
Viscosity values of each diesel, cotton biodiesel, and blends of them at different temperatures
(between 293 K and 373 K) were measured. Density values of them were also measured at different
temperatures (between 274 K and 313 K). In ANN architecture, D, B100, B75, B50, B40, and B30
were used for training purpose, and the remaining data of B20 was used for testing purpose to
evaluate prediction accuracy of ANN.

2. Material and method

2.1. Biodiesel production
Cotton oil was procured from a local market. It was used without any purification. For preparation
of sodium methoxide mixture, methanol (special grade, 99%) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH, extra
pure, 99.0%) were used.
In the biodiesel production process, transesterification reaction was used. To determine transes-
terification reaction, a spherical glass reactor equipped with reflux condenser, magnetic stirrer, and
contact thermometer was used. In transesterification reaction, necessary amounts of methyl alcohol
(6:1) and sodium hydroxide (0.5% by the weight of oil) were used to obtain sodium methoxide
mixture. Then cotton oil and sodium methoxide were mixed in the glass reactor at 60°C for 90
minutes. After the transesterification reaction was completed, the obtained crude methyl ester was
cooled to room temperature, and then it was kept in separation funnel for 8 hours. Later, crude
glycerine was separated from methyl ester. Eventually, the obtained crude methyl ester was washed
three times with warm water and heated until 105°C to remove water residuals.

2.2. Preparing the fuel blends

In this experimental work, biodiesel produced from cotton oil was used. Fuel blends were prepared by
mixing diesel fuel with biodiesel at volumetric fraction of 20, 30, 40, 50, and 75%. Yellowline OS 10 Basic
circular shaker device was used for obtaining homogeny fuel blends.
 ENERGY SOURCES, PART A: RECOVERY, UTILIZATION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS 3

2.3. Fuel properties

Fuel analysis measurements were performed at the Çukurova University Automotive Engineering
Laboratories. The fuel properties were measured according to the standard test method. The
measured fuel properties were density, kinematic viscosity, higher heating value, pour point,
cloud point, and cold filter plugging point. Table 1 shows the specifications of fuel properties
measurement devices.

2.4. Artificial neural network

Artificial neural networks imitate biological neural networks. Neurons are basic units of an ANN. In
ANN architecture, these small units called as neurons are interconnected to each other by weights. A
typical structure is shown in Figure 1. A signal comes from external world to the ANN structure.
Then, it is processed, and an output signal is generated. Generally, ANN structure is consisted of
three main layers called as input, hidden, and output. These layers are connected to each other by
weights.
ANNs can give suitable model structure to fit experimental data by utilizing samples from experi-
ments (Hosoz et al., 2007). ANNs can be likened to “black box” model. ANN does not need detailed
information about the system. The main idea is learning relationship between the input and output data
that were recorded previously (Kara-Togun and Bayseç, 2010).

Table 1. The specifications of fuel properties measurement device.

Property Device Accuracy
Density (g/cm3) Kyoto Electronics DA-130 ±0.001 g/cm3
Kinematic viscosity (mm2/s) Tanaka AKV-202 ±0.01 mm2/s
Higher Heating value (kJ/kg) IKA-Werke C2000 0.001 K
Pour Point (°C) Tanaka MPC 102L ±1°C
Cloud Point (°C) Tanaka MPC 102L ±1°C
Cold Filter Plugging Point (°C) Tanaka AFP-102 –

Figure 1. Typical representation of ANN.

4 C. ÖZGÜR AND E. TOSUN

3. Results and discussions

3.1. Fuel properties
Table 2 gives the fuel properties of cotton biodiesel and diesel fuel. As seen from the table, all cotton
biodiesel fuel properties are in the range of EN 14214 biodiesel standards.

3.2. Artificial neural networks

In this study, viscosity and density values were recorded for different temperature and blend ratio values.
As seen from Table 3, seven types of fuel were used totally. Data of first six fuels were used for training
period. It corresponds to 85% of total data. Remaining fuel was used to test the ANN performance, and it
corresponds to 15% of total data. The same ratios were used for both viscosity and density predictions.
Neural network toolbox of MATLAB software was used to construct the model.
In Figures 2 and 3, viscosity and density predictions for test data (B20) can be seen. There is good
correlation in between experimental and ANN results. Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) learning algorithm
was used in both structures. Transfer functions are logistic sigmoid (logsig) and linear (purelin) for
hidden and output layer, respectively. Different numbers for hidden layer neuron were tried. It was
concluded that, three neurons for viscosity and four neurons for density give best accurate results.
Linear regression (LR) was performed in SPSS software in order to make comparison with ANN. As
can be seen from Figures 4 and 5, linear regression results are not satisfactory as ANN. Regression
coefficients were given in Table 4.
Table 5 summarizes the mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of models for both train and
test sections. MAPE can be expressed as (Tosun and Çalık, 2016):
1 X n joi  ti j
MAPE ¼ :100
n i¼1 ti

where t is target value, o is output value, and n is total number of data.

Table 2. Fuel properties of diesel and cotton biodiesel.

Fuel properties Diesel Cotton biodiesel EN 14214
Density 15°C 835,8 886,9 860–900
Viscosity (cSt) 2,76 4,758 3.5–5
Pour point (°C) −12 +6 Summer < 4.0, winter < −1.0
Cloud point (°C) −10 +9 –
Cold filter plugging point (°C) −11 +7 –
Higher heating value (kJ/kg) 45,800 40,895 –
Cetane Number 56,45 52 Min. 51
Flash Point (°C) 78 >130 Min. 120

Table 3. Fuel specifications for training and testing section.

Fuels Fuel Description Data Type Data% (viscosity) Data% (density)
D Diesel Train Data 85% 85%
B100 Biodiesel
B75 25% Diesel + 75% Biodiesel
B50 50% Diesel + 50% Biodiesel
B40 60% Diesel + 40% Biodiesel
B30 70% Diesel + 30% Biodiesel
B20 80% Diesel + 20% Biodiesel Test Data 15% 15%
 ENERGY SOURCES, PART A: RECOVERY, UTILIZATION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS 5

5
Viscosity (Experimental) Viscosity (ANN)
4
Viscosity

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80
Test Data
Figure 2. Test results of ANN for viscosity prediction.

860

855
Density (Experimental) Density (ANN)
850

845
Density

840

835

830

825

820
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Test Data
Figure 3. Test results of ANN for density prediction.

5
Viscosity (Experimental) Viscosity (LR)
4
Viscosity

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80
Test Data
Figure 4. Linear regression for viscosity prediction.
6 C. ÖZGÜR AND E. TOSUN

865
860
Density (Experimental) Density (LR)
855
850
Density

845
840
835
830
825
820
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Test Data
Figure 5. Linear regression for density prediction.

Table 4. Linear regression coefficients.

Viscosity Density
Y = Viscosity Y = Density
X1 = Temperature
X2 = Blend Ratio
Y = β0 + β1X1+ β2X2
β0 β1 β2 β0 β1 β2
19.018 −0.051 0.015 1,082.414 −0.855 0.525

Table 5. MAPE values of train and test sections.

Viscosity Density
MAPE (%) Train Test Train Test
ANN 0.21 0.19 0.02 0.02
LR 13.72 16.87 0.13 0.17

4. Conclusions
In this study, density and viscosity values of cotton biodiesel at different temperatures are measured
by experiments, and the obtained results were compared by using artificial neural network method.
The conclusions obtained are as follows:

● As the temperature increased, the density and viscosity values of fuel blends are decreased.
● When biodiesel content in mixture increases, density and viscosity values increase.
● ANN is a very effective tool for fuel property estimation without experimental procedure.
● ANN predictions were more accurate than LR results.
● While the worst prediction results belong to LR of viscosity with 16.89% MAPE, best prediction
results were obtained for density with use of ANN that has 0.02% MAPE.
 ENERGY SOURCES, PART A: RECOVERY, UTILIZATION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS 7

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