Recently, the federal government of Brazil has encouraged
castor oil plant cultivation for the production of biodiesel and bioethanol.
Although there are some difficulties in the chemical processes involved in
the preparation of biocombustibles originating from castor oil (Dabdoub
et al., 2009), the energy balances for biodiesel production appear favorable
(Chechetto et al., 2010), and there is also some ongoing research
on alternative processes to increase the quality and yield of these processes