Pure and Applied Chemistry

Abstract: The demand for transportation fuels - gasoline (for cars), diesel (for trucks and cars), and kerosene (for aircraft) - is predicted to increase. The fastest growth will be observed for kerosene, in competition with diesel, inducing constraints on diesel. At the same time, all of these fuels are derived mainly from oil (more than 95 %), thus generating growing, uncontrolled CO₂ emissions. Therefore, production of diesel derived from biomass (the so-called biodiesel) appears as a major objective. In this paper, we describe the existing industrial processes, discuss the possible improvements, and present the new routes (the "second-generation" processes) under development that will allow biodiesel to gain a significant percentage of the diesel (and maybe of middle distillates) pool.