Exergo-environmental life cycle assessment of biodiesel production from mutton tallow transesterification

The main purpose of this study is to comprehensively investigate a biodiesel production system by transesterification of mutton tallow. To this end, an exergo-environmental life cycle assessment was applied. Exergetic investigation identifies the location, magnitude and sources of the thermodynamic inefficiencies in the biodiesel production process (the highest priority components for process improvement from the thermodynamic point of view). In contrast, environmental life cycle assessment identifies the environmental hot spot subsystems of the entire mutton tallow-to-biodiesel system (the highest priority life cycle steps for environmental improvement).