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Biofuel Technologies pp 29–49Cite as

Sustainability Assessment of Palm Biodiesel Production in Thailand

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Abstract

Palm oil is the world’s largest source of edible oil and is recently being promoted to produce biodiesel in South–East Asian countries including Thailand. The impacts of palm biodiesel production and use to the environment and socioeconomic development in Thailand are presented. Substituting palm biodiesel for diesel can result in various positive externalities to the Thai society and economy such as GHG emissions reduction, employment generation, GDP development, and trade balance improvement. However, some potential environmental drawbacks of increased palm biodiesel production in the future such as the increase in eutrophication impact potential and land-use change from forest land to oil palm need to be considered and regulated. Improving the sustainability of palm oil and palm biodiesel industry in the future entails the investigation on the potential exploitation of palm-based biorefinery systems along with the concept of “cascade utilization” to fully utilizing biomass residues and wastes generated from palm oil and palm biodiesel industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand

    Thapat Silalertruksa & Shabbir H. Gheewala

  2. Center for Energy Technology and Environment, Ministry of Education, Bangkok, Thailand

    Thapat Silalertruksa & Shabbir H. Gheewala

Authors
  1. Thapat Silalertruksa
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  2. Shabbir H. Gheewala
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Correspondence to Shabbir H. Gheewala .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Biochemistry, National University of Ireland Galway, University Road, Galway, N/A, Ireland

    Vijai Kumar Gupta

  2. , Department of Biochemistry, National University of Ireland Galway, University Road, Galway, N/A, Ireland

    Maria G. Tuohy

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Silalertruksa, T., Gheewala, S.H. (2013). Sustainability Assessment of Palm Biodiesel Production in Thailand. In: Gupta, V., Tuohy, M. (eds) Biofuel Technologies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34519-7_2

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