Application of Life Cycle Assessment Tool on Biodiesel Production: Assessing the Environmental Impact of Biodiesel

Abstract

Bioenergy is an economic and ecological alternative energy, derived from biomaterials such as bioethanol, biomass, biodiesel etc. Therefore, biodiesel is a renewable and biodegradable fuel could be manufactured from vegetable oils, animal fats, or recycled restaurant grease. Traditionally world believes that the renewable energy has no impact on environment and ecology. Therefore, the key objective of this study is to assess the environmental undesirable impact associated with the production of biodiesel. The present research used the cooked oil (waste) as a feedstock for biodiesel production and assesses the life cycle impact of one ton of biodiesel. The life cycle of this product involves four stages including collection of feed stock, pre- treatment, transportation/ delivery stage and transesterification process. Waste oil was collected from food industry. After the pre-treatment of waste cooked oil, it was allowed for the transesterification process. The environmental impact was analyzed by SimaPro 7.1 software. Although, biodiesel is a renewable energy, one ton of biodiesel production contributes to the global warming potential around 287.3 kgCO2 eq. However, the amount is smaller than other conventional fuel such as fossil fuel and coal. Other environmental impacts such as Eutrophication, terrestrial eco-toxicity can be negligible. The transesterification stage is the main reason for the (69.27%) total environmental impacts.