Sustainability of Methylic and Ethylic Biodiesel Production Routes

Sustainability of Methylic and Ethylic Biodiesel Production Routes: Social and Environmental Impacts via Multi-criteria and Principal Component Analyses using Brazilian Case Studies presents an innovative, quantitative methodology for the assessment of the social and environmental sustainability of methylic and ethylic production routes. Sections explain the key steps in assessing the social and environmental impacts of biofuel production chains, including an overview of biodiesel properties and its production chains, common metrics for environmental, social and economic impacts, explain sustainability indicator variabilities and detect similarities among different classes of sustainability indicators, and cover techno-economic considerations.

Finally, several appendices provide readers with MATLAB codes for solving Principal Component Analysis and Multi-Criterial Sustainability Analysis problems in the context of biodiesel chains or in the context of agronomy and agronomics. This book is an invaluable reference for anyone working on biofuels and bioenergy, including scientific, technical, management, social, environmental and policy professionals.

• Presents analytical methodologies for the sustainability assessment of biodiesel processes using case studies from the Brazilian biodiesel sector
• Explains Multi-Criteria Sustainability Analysis for ranking technologies and producing chains in terms of environmental and social sustainability from large sets of indicators and statistics
• Provides MATLAB-based examples of Principal Component Analysis and Multi-Criteria Analysis problems
• Offers case studies from the second largest biodiesel chain in the world, Brazil