Biodiesel from Waste Cooking Oils in Portugal: Alternative Collection Systems

Abstract

Waste Cooking Oils (WCO) have been gaining prominence as an alternative feedstock for biodiesel production due to is potential to reduce the economic and environmental costs of biodiesel produced with biomass. However, there are various types of WCO collection with different collection efficiency and environmental impacts. The aim of this paper is to present an environmental assessment of biodiesel from WCO addressing different collection schemes in Portugal. The implications of alternative allocation approaches (no allocation, mass allocation, energy allocation and economic allocation) in the final results are also assessed. Life Cycle Impact Assessment was calculated (ReCiPe method) for: Climate Change; Terrestrial Acidification; Marine Eutrophication and Freshwater Eutrophication. WCO collection contribution for the overall impacts ranged significantly for the various collection system and impact categories. The application of different allocation approaches led to differences in the results up to 11 %. A comparison between the GHG emissions calculated for biodiesel from WCO and the typical and default values presented in the Renewable Energy Directive was performed. The GHG emission saving for biodiesel from WCO collected in Portugal ranged from 81 to 89 %.

Analysis of cost-environmental trade-offs in biodiesel production incorporating waste feedstocks: A multi-objective programming approach

“…Depending on the quality of the WCO (mainly related to the percentage of free fatty acids, FFA) the refining process is different. For low quality WCO, the refining consists in an acid-catalyzed process to reduce the percentage of FFA (Jungbluth et al, 2007) while for high quality WCO, the refining consists in filtering to remove impurities and heating to remove water (above 100º C during approximately 2 hours) (Caldeira et al, 2015). The two alternative WCO refining processes are considered in the study.…”

“…The inventory was built with data collected from several references: palm cultivation and palm oil extraction in Colombia (Castanheira et al, 2014); palm cultivation and palm oil extraction in Malaysia, Ecoinvent 3.1 database (Jungbluth et al, 2007) soybeans cultivation in Argentina (considering the reduced tillage cultivation system) (Castanheira and Freire, 2013); soybeans cultivation in Brazil (considering cultivation in Mato Grosso) (Castanheira et al, 2015); soybeans cultivation in the US, Ecoinvent 3.1 database (Jungbluth et al, 2007); rapeseed cultivation in Spain, Germany, France, Canada (Malça et al, 2014); rapeseed cultivation in the US, Ecoinvent 3.1 database; soybean oil extraction in Portugal (Castanheira et al, 2015); rapeseed oil extraction (Castanheira and Freire, 2016); palm, soybean and rapeseed oils refining, (Castanheira and Freire, 2016); low quality WCO refining (Jungbluth et al 2007); high quality WCO refining ( Caldeira et al, 2016) and WCO collection (Caldeira et al, 2016;Caldeira et al, 2015).…”

“…WCO have been gaining prominence as an alternative feedstock for biodiesel production due to their potential to improve the economic and environmental performance of biodiesel compared with crop-based oils (e.g. soya, rapeseed or palm, also designated as virgin oils in this paper) (Caldeira et al, 2015;Carla Caldeira et al, 2016;Dufour and Iribarren, 2012). However, the high uncertainty and variability in WCO chemical composition due to a high diversity of sources hinder guaranteeing biodiesel quality (Knothe and Steidley, 2009).…”

A Voluntary Delivery Point in Reverse Supply Chain for Waste Cooking Oil: An Action Plan for Participation of a Public-School in the State of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

“…Among the sustainable practices that environmental education can address are an environmentally correct collection and destinations for WCO [14,46]. Whether destined for soap [28,33,47] or biodiesel production [11,48,49], WCO collection has been identified as an environmental education tool.…”

Waste cooking oil logistics and environmental assessment for biodiesel production in Cali

“…The authors obtained a periodic routing schedule to repeat over an infinite horizon to calculate the amount of oil to collect, the total inventories and the collection total cost minimized. In another study, [9] evaluated two WCO collection systems in Portugal: door to door and using street containers. Depending on the collection system, the environmental effects can change.…”