Increased environmental awareness and depletion of fossil petroleum resources are driving the automotive industry to seek out and use alternative fuels. The most eminent alternative fuels for replacing fossil fuels in internal combustion engines are biofuels (biodiesel and bioethanol).

Transportation fuels consist of a large number of species that belong to different families of organic compounds with various volatility characteristics. Thus, the usage of detailed evaporation models is restricted by these species and demands an alternative approach.

Volatility is defined as the tendency of a material to change from a liquid state to gaseous state. Proper volatility of fuels is critical to the operation of internal combustion engines with respect to both performance and emissions. Thus, more detailed analysis of fuel volatility properties is a necessity.

An alternative to physical distillation or true boiling point distillation is simulated distillation by Gas Chromatography. This method is very rapid, reproducible, easily automated and can better define initial and final boiling points.

The objective of this paper is twofold: first, to present our method of finding the distillation curve for a type of biodiesel by reduced pressure distillation; and secondly, to determine a simulated distillation by Gas Chromatography and find the relationship between the boiling points of the normal compounds and determined retention or elution time.