The relative viscosity was measured at different filler loadings for a cycloaliphatic epoxy resin and hexahydro-4-methylphthalic anhydride hardener system filled with micro/nano hybrid silica. Various empirical models were fitted to the experimental data and a fitting parameter such as critical filler fractions (φmax) was estimated. Among the models, the Zhang-Evans model gave the best fit to the viscosity data. For all the silica loadings used, ln (relative viscosity) varied linearly with filler loadings. Using the Zhang-Evans model and the linearity characteristics of the viscosity change, simple methods to predict the relative viscosity below φmax are presented in this work. The predicted viscosity values from the two methods at hybrid silica fractions of φ = 0.086 and 0.1506 were confirmed for a micro:nano = 1:1 hybrid filler. As a result, the difference between measured and predicted values was less than 11%, indicating that the proposed predicting methods are in good agreement with the experiment.

The transesterification of vegetable oils into Biodiesel at 60℃ was performed on the rotary viscometer. The overall yield(%) of fatty acid methyl ester from canola oil at optimum conditions was 95%. The viscosities of fatty acid methyl esters were predicted by Orrick and Erbarr's model. The overall yield increased as the viscosities of fatty acid methyl esters decreased. The limiting molar ratio of methanol to oil appeared to be 1:5. The content of sodium hydroxide as the optimum catalyst appeared to be 0.5wt%.