Abstract
Lipid fraction of biomass has been identified as carbon neutral substitution to fuels from fossil sources in the transportation sector. Although, the diesel engine, invented by Rudolph Diesel over a century ago first ran on peanut oil, the current combustion engines are designed to run on hydrocarbon fuels derived from petroleum. Therefore, a substitute for diesel fuel from renewable source will need to have identical or closely similar properties. The most popular of the existing technology for processing vegetable or animal oils is based on the conversion of the triglycerides constituents to fatty acids methyl esters (FAME). FAME technology does not produce diesel fuel with identical properties as petro-diesel. Other alternative processing routes are dilution of the vegetable oils, emulsification, pyrolysis and hydrotreating. These routes are discussed in this paper. Appropriate technologies for small scale production of diesel range hydrocarbon fuel from vegetable oil without the need for co-reactants such methanol or hydrogen as part of the feedstock is emphased. Also alternative catalyst systems in place of the expensive precious metal supported catalysts are suggested.
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