International Biodiesel Day is celebrated annually on August 10. This unofficial holiday of the environmentally friendly fuel was established to commemorate its first use – on August 10, 1893, an engine running on fuel based on peanut oil was started, and to spread information about the benefits of biodiesel fuel.

The diesel engine itself was created by the German engineer and inventor Rudolf Diesel in the 1890s, and the first public demonstration of its operation took place on August 10, 1893 in the city of Augsburg (Germany). This event is considered the first case of biodiesel use in history.

Biodiesel fuel, or biodiesel, is an environmentally friendly fuel for diesel engines, obtained by chemically processing vegetable or animal fats, as well as products of their transesterification. The transesterification reaction allows to reduce the melting point of fats, increase their plasticity and stability to oxidation. By the way, this chemical reaction was discovered in 1853, four decades before the invention of the diesel engine.

Agricultural crops are used to produce biodiesel, for example: in Europe it is rapeseed, in the USA and Africa it is soybeans, in Asia it is coconut or palm oil. Also used are waste vegetable oil, animal fats, castor oil, fish oil, etc. But biofuel is most often produced from rapeseed, as it is the cheapest among vegetable oils. And algae are considered a promising source of raw materials for biodiesel production.

The ecological nature of biodiesel is that its use reduces the emission of carbon dioxide and the amount of soot. It also does not harm animals and plants, and when it gets into the soil and water, it is processed by microorganisms. The period of its almost complete biological decomposition in the soil or water is a month, which allows us to talk about the minimization of environmental pollution.

Biodiesel fuel also has a number of technical advantages. Compared to mineral diesel fuel, it contains almost no sulfur, and at the same time is characterized by good lubricating properties, which extends the life of the engine. In addition, biofuel is relatively safe due to its high ignition temperature – 150 ° C. In addition, a by-product of biodiesel production is glycerin, which is widely used in industry.

^{Biodiesel is produced using agricultural crops (Photo: belchonock, licensed by depositphotos.com )}

But there are also disadvantages: in the cold season, the efficiency of this type of fuel decreases. Biodiesel fuel does not have a long shelf life, and its production from plants takes up agricultural land.

Currently, biofuel is used in motor transport in its pure form and in various mixtures with diesel fuel. The production of “clean” biological energy has already been legally established and is being actively developed by 48 countries, including the USA, Brazil, Japan, China, India, Canada, etc. In the EU countries, biodiesel from agricultural raw materials began to be produced in 1992, and 10 years later, 245 biodiesel plants with a total capacity of 22 million tons were already operating here. Many countries have developed programs for the partial replacement of petroleum motor fuels with various types of biofuels, including biodiesel.

There is no unified state program for the development of biodiesel fuel in Russia yet, but regional projects are being created and plans are being developed to build plants for its production. The Russian Ministry of Agriculture has developed a bill according to which conditions will be created in Russia for the development of the bioindustry sector.

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