Being pursued research on cleaner biodiesel fuel production, Mr. Do Quang Tien (officers of the Corporation and Design Consultant Petroleum – PV Engineering) said there are many reasons to choose biodiesel as fuel because it’s good for the environment, low cost, safe and cleaner than diesel.

In terms of the environment, through the study shows that the use of biodiesel fuel will reduce emissions of CO 2, thereby reducing emissions causing the greenhouse effect. On the other hand, biodiesel contains little sulfur compounds (<0.001% compared with 0.2% for diesel).Furthermore, aromatic HC content of biodiesel is much less than the diesel should not cause cancer. Also, the fuel is capable biodegradable and non-toxic (biodegradable diesel 4 times faster, from 85-88% decomposition in water after 28 days).

According to Mr. Do Quang Tien, technically, biodiesel is higher than diesel safety. Biodiesel is very flexible, can be mixed with diesel in any proportion. Biodiesel has a higher flash point diesel, complete combustion, safe tank and use. Biodiesel has better lubricating properties. Due to similar diesel should generally not be necessary when using any detailed improvements to the engine.

In economic terms, the use of biodiesel fuel in addition to solving the problem of environmental pollution and encourages agricultural development, leveraging existing potentials in the agricultural sector such as waste oil, animal fat, the Other oils have little value in the use of food. At the same time diversifying agriculture and income generation in rural areas. Moreover, it will help curb imported diesel fuel, contribute to national saving a large amount of foreign currency. Moreover, this fuel can also use fuel in commercial boilers.

Current practice biodiesel (referred to as B), seldom used alone but is often prepared with oil to make diesel fuel compounds in commercial use. Ratio of 0-100% biodiesel with diesel. We have the following types of biodiesel: B5 (5% biodiesel blended with 95% diesel), B10 and B20.Particularly B20 can use any diesel that (without changing engine parts). For B100 (including 100% pure biodiesel) can be used but need to change machine parts. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has allowed the use of B2, B5 and B20 worldwide.

In Europe, biodiesel consumption in 2006 increased by 64% (equivalent to 5 billion liters) of biodiesel and volume has doubled each year. In the U.S. and Asia, biodiesel production is doubled, especially in India and China. The two governments have set targets to replace 15% of diesel with biodiesel by 2020. In Indonesia, the government has asked the industry to use biodiesel for transportation starting from January 7/2012. For Malaysia currently has 28 biodiesel plants with volume reached 500,000 tons.
In Vietnam, the government has set a target using 5% biodiesel to replace diesel oil from 2016 to 2025.

Source material for the production of biodiesel is considered very rich, including vegetable oils (such as soybean, rapeseed, palm, micro-algae, coconut, jatropha) or animal fats (such as fish, catfish, pig …) and used cooking oil.

Need to remove the barriers

Previously, one of the main obstacles to widespread use of biodiesel in the country is its cost is still higher than about twice the price of diesel fuel. The study showed, for the production of biodiesel in Vietnam in large scale, it is necessary to have an abundant source of raw materials and stable. The raw materials from vegetable oils (such as sunflower, canola, palm …) is a high cost for the production of biodiesel would be uneconomical. On the other hand, agricultural land for food crops and oil are limited. It is known, to solve the problem of raw materials, the world tends to develop crops such as jatropha oil (fence stakes) or the type of high yield algae.

In recent years, energy experts have seen the advantage of processing biodiesel from waste oil – a source of cheap raw materials and optimal as possible helps reduce the cost of biodiesel.However, it has been suggested that the collection of waste cooking oil in the country is hardly feasible due to the limited number, the small dispersion.

According to the survey of Mr. Do Quang Tien, in the country, the production of biodiesel from waste frying oil and the only new production at small scale (laboratory or in small production facility with about 2 thousand liters / year). There has not been any factory biodiesel from used cooking oil in Vietnam. Furthermore, quality standards for biodiesel has not been set. Products retail biodiesel production from domestic supposedly not meet ASTM quality standards (standardization requirements of the global market).

As for the production of biodiesel from fish oil, in Vietnam the only biodiesel plant for production of Minh Tu Co. from catfish fat was inaugurated in 2009 in Can Tho. The plant produced 50,000 liters of biodiesel per day and have exported to Singapore market. However, the cost of biodiesel from fatty fish is still higher than diesel due to higher prices of fish oil.

The clean energy experts said that the biggest difficulty in the production of biodiesel in the country is the level of technology and equipment is limited, outdated, patchwork equipment, lack of public small capacity (less than 10 million liters / year), consumed more units of energy per unit of product, using only traditional materials makes production costs high. On the other hand, the difficulties when using biodiesel conversion in Vietnam are still many barriers to certain information policy of the car manufacturers.

It can be seen that the production of biodiesel in the country will still face many difficulties and difficult to replicate, adequate investment without the support of the State. This requires policies and measures to remove the barriers that are immediate incentives for businesses to invest in this sector and tax incentives to support appropriate development research and development using biodiesel.

In addition, the State should also earlier issued quality standards for the manufacturing enterprise stability, product distribution and help the authorities monitor the quality biodiesel production and circulation on the market. Furthermore, the model also needs to build low investment, distribution of biodiesel fuels for densely populated areas. Also need to build models of growing, processing, blending biodiesel fuel for farm machinery locally.