<p>This paper describes a simple and rapid methodology for determining the content of adulterants in diesel by the integration of fluorescence spectra. The procedure consists of constructing analytical curves using the concentrations of each adulterant in diesel and the relative change in the fluorescence area of each blend with respect to the fluorescence area of the diesel. The results indicated that the proposed method can be used to determine adulterants such as non-transesterified residual cooking oil, kerosene, and turpentine in diesel. The detection limits were 3, 4 and 5% for non-transesterified residual cooking oil, kerosene and turpentine in diesel, respectively. The method was also successfully used to determine the non-transesterified residual cooking oil content in B5 biodiesel-diesel blend (5% biodiesel) in the range of 0-70%, with a limit of detection of 4%.</p>

Total spectrofluorimetry associated to Principal Components Analysis (PCA) were used to classify into different groups the samples of diesel oil, biodiesel, vegetal oil and residual oil, as well as, to identify addition of non-transesterified residual vegetable oil, instead of biodiesel, to the diesel oil. Using this method, the samples of diesel oil, mixtures of biodiesel in diesel and mixtures of residual oil in diesel were separated into well-defined groups.

Thermal baths to decrease ambient temperature are an indispensable tool for most research and teaching laboratories, especially those in tropical or equatorial regions. A simple and inexpensive thermal bath has been developed based on a scratched compressor. It has three possible setups for cooling: sample immersed into the bath, sample flowing through the bath, and cooling liquid flowing in a jacket around the sample. It has been tested for 40 months. The temperature ranges from room temperature to 0 °C, when using water. The repeatability is better than 3% and the precision varies from 0.5% to 2%.