Non-edible vegetable oils: A critical evaluation of oil extraction, fatty acid compositions, biodiesel production, characteristics, engine performance and emissions production

World energy demand is expected to increase due to the expanding urbanization, better living standards and increasing population. At a time when society is becoming increasingly aware of the declining reserves of fossil fuels beside the environmental concerns, it has become apparent that biodiesel is destined to make a substantial contribution to the future energy demands of the domestic and industrial economies. There are different potential feedstocks for biodiesel production. Non-edible vegetable oils which are known as the second generation feedstocks can be considered as promising substitutions for traditional edible food crops for the production of biodiesel. The use of non-edible plant oils is very significant because of the tremendous demand for edible oils as food source. Moreover, edible oils’ feedstock costs are far expensive to be used as fuel. Therefore, production of biodiesel from non-edible oils is an effective way to overcome all the associated problems with edible oils. However, the potential of converting non-edible oil into biodiesel must be well examined. This is because physical and chemical properties of biodiesel produced from any feedstock must comply with the limits of ASTM and DIN EN specifications for biodiesel fuels. This paper introduces non-edible vegetable oils to be used as biodiesel feedstocks. Several aspects related to these feedstocks have been reviewed from various recent publications. These aspects include overview of non-edible oil resources, advantages of non-edible oils, problems in exploitation of non-edible oils, fatty acid composition profiles (FAC) of various non-edible oils, oil extraction techniques, technologies of biodiesel production from non-edible oils, biodiesel standards and characterization, properties and characteristic of non-edible biodiesel and engine performance and emission production. As a conclusion, it has been found that there is a huge chance to produce biodiesel from non-edible oil sources and therefore it can boost the future production of biodiesel. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.