Life Cycle Analysis and Feasibility of the Use of Waste Cooking Oil as Feedstock for Biodiesel

Petroleum based fossil fuels used to power most processes today are non-renewable fuels. This means that once used, they cannot be reproduced for a very long time. The maximum combustion of fossil fuels occurs in automobiles i.e. the vehicles we drive every day. Thus, there is a requirement to shift from these non-renenewable sources of energy to sources that are renewable and environment friendly. This is causing the need to shift towards more environmentally-sustainable transport fuels, preferably derived from biomass, such as biodiesel blends. These blends can be made from oils that are available in abundance or as waste e.g. waste cooking oil, animal fat, oil from seeds, oil from algae etc. Waste Cooking Oil(WCO) is a waste product and so, converting it into a transportation fuel is considered highly environmentally sustainable. Keeping this in mind, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to evaluate the environmental implications of replacing diesel fuel with WCO biodiesel blends in a regular Diesel engine. This study uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine the environmental outcomes of biodiesel from WCO in terms of global warming potential, life cycle energy efficiency (LCEE) and fossil energy ratio (FER) using the life cycle inventory and the openLCA software, version 1.3.4: 2007 - 2013 GreenDelta. This study resulted in the conclusion that the biodiesel production process from WCO in particular is more environmentally sustainable as compared to the preparation of diesel from raw oil, also taking into account the combustion products that are released into the atmosphere as exhaust emissions.