How are palm oil biofuels made?
Palm oil is extracted from the palm fruit (and palm kernel oil from the seeds). It is reacted with an alcohol with base catalysis (usually NaOH). This produces esters and glycerol. The esters are extracted for biodiesel. I am greatly in favor of biofuels. But we should be making them from waste products not planting crops designed just to provide us with fuels. There is not enough farmland for that — and we need to eat. I am really against cutting down rain-forests to plant oil palm to replace diesel. We have so much waste material — from the waste stream from petrochemical plants, to left over cooking material, to those parts of the crops we do not eat, . . . — and so much of it is dumped or put in landfills.
