Vegetable oil refining

Vegetable oil refining

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Vegetable oil can be used as feedstock for an oil refinery. There it can be transformed into fuel by hydrocracking (which breaks big molecules into smaller ones using hydrogen) or hydrogenation (which adds hydrogen to molecules). These methods can produce gasoline, diesel, or propane. Some commercial examples of vegetable oil refining are NExBTL, H-Bio, and the ConocoPhilips process. ^[1]

Comparison to biosiesel

The normal method of making biodiesel is mixing vegetable oil, alcohol, and sodium hydroxide. This is simple enough that many people do it at home. ^[2] There is a 10% by-product of glycerol. When refining vegetable oil no glycerol is produced, only fuels.

Market

Germany expects to replace 3% of their diesel with fuel produced by refining vegetable oil by 2010. ^[3] Petrobras plans to use 256 million liters of vegetable oils in the production of H-Bio fuel in 2007. ConocoPhilips is processing 42,000 gallons per day. Neste Oil completed their first NExBTL plant in the summer 2007 and the second one will be completed in 2009. The annual production capacity of each these two plants will be 170,000 tons. ^[4]

References

1. ^ http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/conocophillips_.html
2. ^ http://youtube.com/watch?v=-e0G0FBeNRg
3. ^ http://www.checkbiotech.org/green_News_Biofuels.aspx?infoId=16240
4. ^ http://www.nesteoil.com/default.asp?path=1,41,539,7516,7522