Currently, the global biodiesel market is led by Europe and US.
In the year 2005, the total consumption of biodiesel reached
3.32 million tons/year; which is 3.07 million tons/year in Europe
and 0.25 million tons/year in US. These values are only 2% of the
total amount of diesel consumed for transportation in Europe and
0.5–1% in US. In a bid to further boost the use of biofuels in
European transport, EU leaders have committed to raise the share
of biofuels in transport to 5.75% and 20% in the year 2010 and
2020, respectively. Therefore, the demand for biodiesel in Europe
alone is expected to increase to more than 10 million tons/year in
the year 2010 and 68 million tons/year in 2020 [53].
At the moment, soybean and rapeseed oil are the widely used
biodiesel feedstock in EU and US market. This is not only because
of its large availability in these two regions, but also due to the
properties of the biodiesel produced. It was found that biodiesel
produced from rapeseed and soybean oil has good cold flow
properties making it suitable to be used during cold weather in
these two regions especially during winter. Nevertheless, the
relatively low yield (and also high cost) of these two oils will not
be sufficient to meet the increasing demand of biodiesel in the
future. Therefore, in the recent years, more and more biodiesel
producers have been targeting on palm oil. With the highest yield
per hectare, palm oil is currently the world’s cheapest and largest
edible oil that is being consumed. The low cost of palm oil makes