Using Animal Fat To Make Biodiesel

Generally, when one defines biodiesel they say that it is a biofuel created from a variety of ester-based fuels which came from vegetable oils, such as soybean oil, canola or hemp oil. Biodiesel is a renewable source of fuel unlike the non-renewable fossil fuels. Biodiesel is a very efficient and environment friendly fuel which is used to power diesel engines without having to modify any of the engine's parts.

Aside from vegetable oils, biodiesel fuel can also be produced by using animal fat. In fact, due to the increases in prices of oil, people are looking for more alternatives. However, because biodiesel uses food crops, it is highly possible that crops production be geared towards supplying biodiesel production plants instead of being consumed as food. The demand for food crops has also caused an increase in prices which is detrimental to the country's food supply.

That's why biodiesel manufacturers are looking into alternative sources of oil for producing biodiesel. And they are looking into utilizing more the cheaper animal fat as feedstock to the ever growing biodiesel production.

 Let's say a company is able to produces more than 2.3 billion pounds of chicken fat per year. With the present technologies used in biodiesel production, this figure means a production plant can produce as much as 300 million gallons or 1.14 billion liters of biodiesel.

It is rather unfortunate that a number of countries around the globe are limiting their production of biodiesel through the use of vegetables oils. In Europe, for instance, biodiesel has always been synonymous for rapeseed oil methyl ester or RME. Only a small part of the public do realize that alternative fuel can pretty much be achieved through the use of other sources like non-edible oils (or seed oils), used cooking oils, and of course animal fats.

In 2001, the SARIA Bio-Industries GmbH in Malchin, Germany began their own biodiesel production plant but this time using the animal fat left as a by-product at their nearby rendering factory as the main source of oil. The company was able to produce 12,000 tons of biodiesel per year from animal fats. Plus the biodiesel quality was the highest according to European standards.

The main differences between vegetable oils like rapeseed oil and animal fats lie on the composition of the fatty acids. Rapeseed oil and soybean oil have a high content of unsaturated fatty acids, mainly oleic acid and linoleic acid, while animal fats like tallow or lard have are mostly composed of saturated fatty acids. According to studies, animal fats perform well in biodiesel. However, while the oxidation stability of biodiesel produced from using animal fats increases, the cold temperature performance decreases as the content of saturated fatty acids increases.

Still, other benefits of using animal fats in biodiesel production includes having cetane numbers reaching up to 74 which means better performance in diesel engines. It also means biodiesel from animal fat reduces more exhaust emissions and means higher engine efficiency plus noise level is also reduced considerable compared to conventional fossil diesel fuel.

So besides the fact the animal based biodiesel has reduced performance in colder temperatures, using animal oil appears to be more than what the manufacturers and consumers has bargained for. Not only does animal fat cheaper but when converted into biodiesel it becomes a better fuel resulting to better engine efficiency and performance with less the harmful emissions and noise pollution compared to the usual vegetable based biodiesel and definitely better than the conventional petroleum based diesel.