Biodiesel Production from Sunflower: an Environmental Study

Abstract

Biofuels, like bioethanol and biodiesel, are important alternatives to mineral fuels in order to reduce fossil fuel consumption in the transport sector. In this study, an environmental analysis of biodiesel production on pilot scale from sunflower oil was performed. The life cycle of biodiesel production involves different stages: 1) agricultural phases; 2) oil extraction from seeds; 3) transesterification to obtain the biodiesel; 4) distribution and 5) waste management. In this study, the system boundaries covered the agricultural stages, the industrial stages, the distribution and the waste management; the biodiesel usage was not considered. The chosen functional unit was 1 ton of biodiesel, and the life cycle assessment (LCA) study was performed using the SimaPro 8.0.4 software through the IMPACT 2002+ method. The environmental emissions were compared to the ones obtained producing 1 ton of diesel from fossil fuels. Data for the life cycle inventory (LCI) were obtained from the Ecoinvent database or experimentally.