It is tempting to read the UK government’s commitment to ending the sale of new petrol and diesel passenger cars by 2035 as straightforwardly bad news for biodiesel producers. If the vehicles that currently consume the vast majority of road transport fuel are transitioning to electric powertrains, the reasoning goes, then the market for liquid …

The decision between batch processing and continuous flow reactor technology is one of the most consequential capital and operational choices a biodiesel producer faces as they move beyond hobby or pilot scale into genuine commercial production. It is also one of the most frequently misframed, because the question is rarely as simple as “which is …

The transesterification reaction sits at the heart of every biodiesel production process, and the catalyst you use to drive it is not a minor process variable. It determines your reaction rate, your yield, your sensitivity to feedstock quality, your water and methanol consumption in downstream processing, your effluent profile, and ultimately the cost structure of …

Every litre of biodiesel you produce comes with an unavoidable co-product, and how you manage that co-product will determine whether it represents a cost centre, a compliance headache, or a genuine contribution to your operation’s margins. Crude glycerol – the dense, dark, methanol-laden liquid that separates from your FAME layer after transesterification – is generated …

The question facing biodiesel producers with an eye on aviation and maritime markets is not whether power-to-liquid technologies are technically viable – they are – but whether they will become economically competitive quickly enough, and at sufficient scale, to crowd out biogenic fuels before the biofuel industry has fully established itself in those sectors. The …

If you are sourcing used cooking oil as a feedstock for biodiesel production in the UK, you are operating within a supply chain that is far more substantial, more structurally complex, and more legally fraught than most people outside the industry appreciate. UCO is not simply waste grease that gets collected and processed – it …

If you produce biodiesel in the United Kingdom and you are not actively managing Cloud Point (CP) and Cold Filter Plugging Point (CFPP) through the winter months, you are almost certainly producing fuel that will cause vehicle breakdowns between November and March. Not because it fails laboratory certification at the point of manufacture, but because …