|Articles|April 1, 2008

LCGC North America

  • LCGC North America-04-01-2008
  • Volume 26
  • Issue 4

Peaks of Interest- Scientists Create New Biodiesel Manufacturing Process

Scientists Arlin Gyberg, Clayton McNeff, and Ben Yan developed the Mcgyan process for manufacturing biodiesel.

Scientists Arlin Gyberg, Clayton McNeff, and Ben Yan developed the Mcgyan process for manufacturing biodiesel. They have built and tested a column that mixes oil and alcohol with the catalyst zirconia under high heat and pressure until the mix becomes supercritical. Under the right conditions in the column, the oil and alcohol are converted into biodiesel in six seconds. The Mcgyan process is patent pending with McNeff's Ever Cat Fuels LLC company, Anoka, Minnesota.

Articles in this issue


Related to this article

Chromatography Detects Toxins in Tea Samples
High-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectroscopy (HPLC–MS/MS) chromatography reveals pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA)/pyrrolizidine alkaloid N-oxides (PANO) toxin risks in 63 tea samples.
Figure 2. Split injection used to measure triplicate test of MTBE, hexane, o-xylene, and 1-methylnaphthalene comparing different solvents (methanol, methylene chloride) and column insertion distances starting with 0.5 mm, 5.0 mm, 10.0 mm, 15 mm, and 20.0 mm. Methanol had the best performance at the 5.0 mm insertion distance and methylene chloride looked slightly better at the 0.5 mm. We would still recommend not going below the 5.0 mm manufacturer recommended insertion distance.
Revisiting insertion distance for methanol and methylene chloride in GC analysis and confirming that insertion depth strongly affects response and reproducibility.