The prices of biodiesel in international market ranges about
$250 per ton based on their purification degrees and grades.
Currently the production bases for commercial biodiesel have
been set up in USA and some countries of Europe and Asia, and
biodiesel has become an alternative of existing fuels and adopted
widely.
Europe is the place where biodiesel is adopted vastly, with share
of 5% among the total refined oil market. Presently rapeseed oil
is the feedstock of biodiesel in Europe, and the standards of biodiesel
is based on the biodiesel standard quality with reference of rapeseed
oil, see Table 4 for the German standards of current stage. By
the year of 1999 the Europe Union had produced a volume of 3.90*105m3
biodiesel. At the beginning of 2000, the total production had reached
450 kt in Germany and showed a growing trend. Since 1991, CIMBRIA
SKET GmbH has been developing techniques and facilities for biodiesel
production with feedstock of vegetable oils like rapeseed. The
company has set up biodiesel production plants in German, Austria
and some European countries with capacity up to 300t/d. From Table
5: performance comparisons between regular diesel and biodiesel
developed by CIMBRIA SKET GmbH, we can see biodiesel is better
than regular diesel in aspects of CFPP, flash point, combustion
efficiency, sulfur content, oxygen content, oxygen consumption,
and hazardous to water source, and similar in other specifications.
