If you use oil in your own kitchen, don’t throw it away because it can be converted into biofuel. Used vegetable oil is one of the raw material for the production of biodiesel. There are many vegetable oils that you can use as a raw material for this conversion. Some of them are classified as Waste Vegetable Oil or Used Vegetable Oil and Pure Plant Oil.
Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) or Used Vegetable Oil (UVO) is oil that discarded from restaurants or households. From the fast food restaurants, snack factories and industrial potato processing plants in the United States themselves, they produce more than 11 billion liters of Waste Vegetable Oil in a year. You can imagine how much WVO produced by people all over the world. This huge potential should encourage us to produce biodiesel by our selves to utilize our own WVO for economical and environmental reasons.
Pure Plant Oil (PPO) or Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) is oil from particular plant that are specifically planted to produce biodiesel. In the last ten years, many governments around the world encourage their scientists to create technology that converts relatively cheap plant oil into fuel. Governments are also give ease to investors who want to put in their effort and capital to develop biodiesel technology. This also assists the agricultural sector because investors who want to build plantation can feel safe with their invested capital.
There are many kinds of plants that can be used as a raw material to produce biodiesel. Some of them may be familiar to you so you can start making diesel fuel immediately.
- Rapeseed, scientifically called Brassica napus, is a yellow flower member of family Brassicaceae. Also known as rape, rapa or rapeseed. Its seeds can contain nearly 65% oil that can be used for consumption and fuel purposes. At the beginning, cost to produce biodiesel from rapeseed was higher than fossil diesel fuel. With higher demand, the price become even higher than before. One of the advantages using rapeseed to make diesel fuel is they produce more oil per land area compared with other oil source plants. That’s why in Europe, rapeseed is preferred.
- Soybean, is also a popular source to make diesel fuel. Its scientific name is Glycine max. Soybean actually has a lot of nutrition for our body. Besides that, soybean also produce oil as raw material for making diesel fuel. In the United States, nearly 80% of domestic biodiesel was produced from soybean oil.
- Jatropha, is a genus name with more than 100 species. Its seeds generally contain 40% oil and count as a future raw material for diesel fuel production. Oil from one of the species, Jatropha curcas, has been used as a raw for biodiesel in many Asian country such as Indonesia and Phillipines. One advantage of the Jatropha, is you can combine it with another crops such as coffee, fruits and vegetables.
- Palm oil, this is quite well known as it is an oil mostly used as cooking oil all over the world. Oil from palm is known as a genuine counter for the greenhouse effect according to Greenpeace. Unfortunately, the resources to build palm plantations need newly-cleared area which sacrafices an area of the forest. That’s why Jatropha is preferred over palm because jatropha can live in marginal area such as ex-mining.
There are many plants that produce oil that can be used to make diesel fuel, although the four mentioned above are the most prevalent. If you do plan to make diesel fuel yourself, the options above should provide you with enough information to get started.
As well as vegetable oils, you can try other sources such as animal fats, algae and oil from halophytes. These also have potential and are promising from an economical point of view. Algae, especially because of its high reproducibility and potential to be grown in sewage areas.
To produce your own biodiesel in medium or large scales, the first step is to choose your source of oil. Alternatives listed above should provide suitable options that are better and affordable for you.
Tags: biodiesel source, biofuel, making biodiesel, making diesel fuel, vegetable oil