Environmental and economic performance of a biodiesel plant using waste cooking oil

• We analyze the efficiency of biodiesel productions by Data Envelopment Analysis.
• The result shows that the costs of biodiesel production could be reduced by 5%.
• The life-cycle CO2 associated with biodiesel productions can be further reduced.

This paper evaluates the environmental and economic performance of a biodiesel plant by using the data envelopment analysis framework considering two outputs (biodiesel and glycerin as a by-product of the biodiesel) and five inputs (waste cooking oil, methanol (MeOH), potassium hydroxide (KOH), power consumption used for operating the biodiesel plant, and truck diesel fuel used for the collection of waste cooking oil). From the results estimated using the time series database on monthly biodiesel production during August 2010 to March 2013, we found that there were many technologically inefficient production activities during the study period. We also demonstrate that a reduction of input costs for the study period of about 5% is possible and life-cycle CO2 emissions associated with biodiesel productions can be further reduced, while the “first best” production activity in both cases of including and excluding external costs for life-cycle CO2 emissions associated with biodiesel productions occurred in February 2013 and the minimum unit production cost was attained in this month.