Biodiesel Resource

• Biodiesel can be made from any plant that yields oil, along with animal fats, float grease, recycled cooking oils and even bugs.
• Biodiesel is carbon neutral. Plants use all the CO₂ emitted when biodiesel burns.
• Feed stocks are everywhere!

Biodiesel Is Made From Recently Grown Biological Materials

Much of our energy supply comes from coal, oil, or natural gas. These resources are "fossil fuels", which are derived from organic materials (plants, animals, and microbes) buried deep below the Earth’s surface by layer upon layer of sediment (sand, mud etc.). Over long periods of time, the organic material is transformed by heat and pressure into crude oil. Fossil fuels are considered non-renewable resources, as they become depleted more quickly than they naturally regenerate. The world’s natural gas, crude oil and coal deposits took millions of years to form, but we have used almost half of the world’s supply in the matter of a few hundred years. For all practical purposes, once a non-renewable energy source is depleted, it will not be replaced within human time scales.

Since 1751, roughly the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned the amount of fossil fuel that would have come from all the plants on Earth for 13,300 years. Jeffrey Dukes, a biologist, ecologist, and dabbler in biogeochemistry at the University of Massachusetts, set out to determine how much plant matter it took to make a gallon of gasoline. His findings were featured in Discover Magazine in April of 2004. He determined a gallon of gas represents approximately 90 metric tons of ancient plant matter as a precursor material - the amount that exists in 40 acres of wheat. Burning that gallon puts 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air. The annual consumption of gasoline in the United States (131 billion gallons in 2004) is equivalent to 25 quadrillion pounds of prehistoric biomass and adds some 2.6 trillion pounds of gaseous carbon dioxide to the atmosphere following combustion.

In contrast, biodiesel is a renewable fuel source because it is derived from renewable biological resources. Renewable energy can theoretically be replaced at the same rate as it is consumed. Here is a partial list of feedstock materials that can be used to produce biodiesel:

algae, coriander, linseed (flax), pecan nuts, avocado, corn (maize), lupine, pumpkin seed, brazil nuts, cotton, macadamia nuts, rapeseed, calendula, euphorbia, mustard seed, rice, cashew, hazelnuts, oats, safflower, castor beans, hemp, oil palm, sesame, cocoa (cacao), jatropha, olive, soybean, coconut, jojoba, opium poppy, sunflowers, coffee, kenaf, peanuts, and tung oil.

Comparing biodiesel to the statistics calculated by Jeffrey Dukes shows a gallon a biodiesel represents .0036 tons of vegetable oil, .16 acres of soybean and .09 acres of sunflower. Although biodiesel tailpipe carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are similar to diesel, biodiesel provides a distinct advantage in a full lifecycle assessment. Plant-based biodiesel cannot emit more CO₂ than the plant absorbs during respiration, so biodiesel does not contribute any excess CO₂ to the atmosphere throughout its entire lifecycle. Compare .16 acres of soybeans to the 40 acres of wheat needed to produce a gallon of gasoline, and you can easily see the advantage of a renewable fuel.

Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, consume and pollute water, harm plant and animal life, create toxic wastes, and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable energy resources can avoid these impacts and risks, can help in conserving fossil resources for future generations, and can lessen our dependence on foreign sources of oil.