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Radiocarbon Dating: A Monitoring Tool for Biofuel Blends

Beginning 2008, the Biofuels Sales Obligation of New Zealand requires companies that sell petrol or diesel to sell biofuels as well. Thus there was a need for the government agency Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) to come up with a monitoring procedure to check if the producers’ claim of biofuel percentages is indeed correct.

Testing the Accuracy of Retail Biodiesel Blends via Radiocarbon Dating

Christopher M. Reddy, et al developed and validated a radiocarbon-based method that can check the accuracy of retail biodiesel blends. The method, which directly quantifies the biogenic carbon in the biodiesel blends, calculates absolute blend content with ±1% accuracy while accounting for real-world variability in all of the input parameters.