Life cycle energy requirements of biodiesel produced from rapeseed oil in Serbia

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to perform a life cycle energy analysis and to evaluate the overall energy efficiency of biodiesel produced from rapeseed oil in Serbia. A comprehensive inventory of material and energy was developed in order to quantify the relevant fossil energy inputs throughout the production chain of biodiesel. The inventory results were calculated by using three different allocation methods so as to demonstrate the effect of allocation on the overall energy efficiency of biodiesel. The sensitivity analysis shows that the choice of the allocation procedure has a major influence on the results. Depending on the allocation method, the fossil energy ratio of biodiesel is between 1.9 and 4.0, which means that biodiesel yields 1.9 to 4 units of fuel product energy per every unit of fossil energy consumed in the life cycle.

Keywords

• life cycle assessment
• biodiesel
• energy efficiency
• serbia