Costs of biodiesel from waste animal fats

Biofuel prices are usually significantly higher than conventional petroleum fuels. They are not fully addressed by normal market mechanisms. Their minimum consumption is determined by law, which favours the position of the biofuel producers in the market. Biodiesel producers are therefore attempting to use cheaper sources of raw materials - waste or inedible oils and fats. Biodiesel (chemically FAME Fatty Acid Methyl Esters) is made from vegetable oils by transesterification with methanol under catalysis with alkali metal hydroxides. Biodiesel in Europe is mainly made of pressed and refined rapeseed oil due to climatic conditions. The high price of produced fuel is determined by the high cost of inputs. Biodiesel can be practically produced from other raw materials. Waste oils and fats unfortunately contain free fatty acids, which must be removed by refining or esterification. An important step in the development of this technology is a pre-treatment process optimization. The cost prices of waste fats and their pre-treatment must be lower than the cost of pure vegetable oil. The economic viability of biodiesel production from waste fats is determined by the costs of raw material pre-treatment process. Costs of the pre-treatment and prices of waste fats should be less than the price of pure vegetable oils. This allows the use of a relatively simple mathematical model based on the economic balance. The specific cost of waste fats and oils can be defined by the quality of raw material, mainly on free fatty acid content, which is expressed by acid number. An important component of total operating costs is the price of esterification agent. This article aims to calculate the costs and the final price of biodiesel from waste animal fat. The overall operating cost of biodiesel production from waste animal fats can be estimated in a simple manner as the cost of pre-treatment of waste fats. The quality of the material must be comparable with the pure vegetable oils. Optimization showed that there are two major factors which influence the economy of this process. The first of these is the price of waste fat material. Biodiesel production is more economical if the pre-treatment of the raw material is at the processing site.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The paper was created with the grant support project IGA University of Economics, Prague F3/19/2016 – Economic efficiency of biofuels from waste materials.