Course: BFM 202 Biodiesel Production

Review Lecture

Potential Production of Biodiesel in the U.S.

Unit 15 Potential Production of Biodiesel in the U.S.

Potential Production of Biodiesel in the United States.

Biodiesel is part of the solution to the values we have identified of using renewable fuels, reducing our dependence of foreign oil, improving environmental concerns over greenhouse gases while improving rural economies by providing jobs here…at home. However, biodiesel from vegetable oil cannot replace all use of fossil fuels.

One of the biggest challenges for replacing fossil fuels with renewable fuels is having enough land to grow soybeans, sunflowers, safflower, cotton seed, rapeseed, canola or any of the other 350 known oil bearing crops.

Currently, there is enough crop land to produce 62 billion liters of soybean oil or 131 billion liters of rapeseed oil which would be 41% or 78% of our fuel needs respectfully. And that would be if we used all the land for renewable fuels, which is not a possibility because we still must grow food.  New alternatives need to be researched to allow us to produce “energy crops” efficiently or find new oil crops that could be grown on non-crop land including microalgae that would not need cropland to be produced. Also, utilizing used cooking oil is another option for a feedstock used to produce biodiesel.

Keith Addison of Journey to Forever comments in “The Biodiesel Bible” (2013) that “we can’t grow enough fuel” and “It will take too much land” may be the right answers, but they answer the wrong question. The right question is Can we find sustainable ways of providing for our fuel and energy needs?

He states further – “A sustainable energy future requires great reductions in energy use (much of which is currently sheer waste), improvements in energy efficiency, and decentralization of supply to the local economy level, along with the use of all ready-to-use renewable energy technologies in combination as the local circumstances require.” He believes that biofuels have a place in a sustainable future, but it requires small-scale, local level projects, where the fuel is grown, processed and used in the same local area (like the local foods efforts sprouting up in communities).

Biodiesel is one part of the challenge of reducing our dependence of foreign oil, improving the environment and providing jobs.