Fuel
Oil as fuel
Biodiesel feedstocks
| Plant oils | Plant oils |
|---|---|
 | |
| Soybeans are used as a source of biodiesel | Soybeans are used as a source of biodiesel |
| Types | Types |
| Vegetable fats | (list) |
| Macerated | (list) |
| Uses | Uses |
| Drying oil - Oil paint | Drying oil - Oil paint |
| Cooking oil | Cooking oil |
| Fuel - Biodiesel | Fuel - Biodiesel |
| Components | Components |
| Saturated fat | Saturated fat |
| Monounsaturated fat | Monounsaturated fat |
| Polyunsaturated fat | Polyunsaturated fat |
| Trans fat | Trans fat |
A variety of oils can be used to produce biodiesel. These include:
- Virgin oil feedstock – rapeseed and soybean oils are most commonly used, soybean oil alone accounting for about ninety percent of all fuel stocks in the US. It also can be obtained from field pennycress and jatropha and other crops such as mustard, jojoba, flax, sunflower, palm oil, coconut, hemp (seelist of vegetable oils for biofuel for more information);
- Waste vegetable oil (WVO);
- Animal fats including tallow, lard, yellow grease, chicken fat,[53] and the by-products of the production of Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil.
- Algae, which can be grown using waste materials such as sewage[54] and without displacing land currently used for food production.
- Oil from halophytes such as Salicornia bigelovii, which can be grown using saltwater in coastal areas where conventional crops cannot be grown, with yields equal to the yields of soybeans and other oilseeds grown using freshwater irrigation[55]
Many advocates suggest that waste vegetable oil is the best source of oil to produce biodiesel, but since the available supply is drastically less than the amount of petroleum-based fuel that is burned for transportation and home heating in the world, this local solution could not scale to the current rate of consumption.
Animal fats are a by-product of meat production and cooking. Although it would not be efficient to raise animals (or catch fish) simply for their fat, use of the by-product adds value to the livestock industry (hogs, cattle, poultry). Today, multi-feedstock biodiesel facilities are producing high quality animal-fat based biodiesel.[1][2] Currently, a 5-million dollar plant is being built in the USA, with the intent of producing 11.4 million litres (3 million gallons) biodiesel from some of the estimated 1 billion kg (2.2 billion pounds) of chicken fat[56] produced annually at the local Tyson poultry plant.[53] Similarly, some small-scale biodiesel factories use waste fish oil as feedstock.[57][58] An EU-funded project (ENERFISH) suggests that at a Vietnamese plant to produce biodiesel from catfish (basa, also known as pangasius), an output of 13 tons/day of biodiesel can be produced from 81 tons of fish waste (in turn resulting from 130 tons of fish). This project utilises the biodiesel to fuel a CHP unit in the fish processing plant, mainly to power the fish freezing plant.[59]