Assessment of the Viability of Vegetable Oil Fuels: Species, Land, Social, Environmental, Population and Safety Considerations

This work follows the literature review and on-road trial findings presented at ICSAT 2013 (Thomas et al. Assessment of the viability of vegetable oil based fuels. In: Lecture notes in mobility—sustainable automotive technologies 2013, 2013). In addition, it addresses the availability of non-food oil-producing species and land, the sociological and environmental aspects associated with growing biofuels and the potential increased safety of using vegetable oil fuels and blends. The author claims that it is essentially impossible to provide the world’s current energy needs without fossil fuels unless humanity is prepared to control its population to a sustainable level. Production methods and costings are not addressed as intended and will be the subject of further study. Costs of growing, extracting, purifying and transporting vegetable oil fuel are lower than any alternatives given the simplicity of processes involved, the fact that almost anyone can perform them and the fact that the fuel can be grown and processed close to point of use by small, non-monopolistic enterprises. Readers wishing to consider costings are referred to reports by the EC Joint Research Commission and the International Energy Agency (IEA) (Production costs of alternative transportation fuels—influence of crude oil price and technology maturity; International Energy Agency; Jensen, Unmodified vegetable oil as an automotive fuel; the institute for prospective technological studies of the European commission directorate general joint research centre).