The energy balance of soybean biodiesel in Brasil: a case study

Abstract

Like any other manufactured product, the production of biofuels involves the consumption of several inputs along its production chain. Energy balance results are often contradictory mainly due to differences in the methodologies used for their calculation. Despite the lack of a national database, this paper is a fi rst estimate of the energy balance of biodiesel from soybean in Brazil. Data collected from fi ve plantations located in the state of São Paulo, with a total production of 2000 metric tonnes, along with information about the industrial production process, were taken into account for calculating the energy balance of soybean biodiesel. A renewability factor of 4.3 was found considering an input allocation factor of 18% up to the stage of soybean oil production. This result was compared to information available in the literature. © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd