Life cycle environmental benefits of biodiesel production and use in Spain

Abstract

The Spanish Ministry of Environment has launched forth into a project related to the evaluation of the environmental impacts of biodiesel production in Spain, in order to support its biofuels promotion policies. The objective of this project is to evaluate the environmental impacts of four different fuels composed by biodiesel from several crude vegetable oils and waste vegetable oils in comparison to diesel EN-590 along their whole life cycle, and to identify the opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts. Biodiesel is produced from sunflower oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil, and palm oil, and also from waste vegetable oils. The transformation technology is that currently used in the Spanish biodiesel plants.