Socio-Effective Value of Bio-Diesel Production

Abstract

Increasing air pollution in urban areas has accelerated the interest in biodiesel and vehicles that consume biodiesel. As a caution, majority of the developed countries have started using biodiesel in transportation or determined goals and targets for the near future. Brazil has been a pioneer in the field, whereas the European Union has set the objective of utilizing 10 % of all vehicles using biodiesel by 2020. While the utilization and implementation of biodiesel-based systems severely contribute to economical and environmental savings, the antecedent production process has its own adverse effects such as the demolishment of agricultural sites. This chapter aims to analyze these effects as well as to propose a model for balancing the trade-offs by minimizing the negative consequences and maximizing the positive ones. The related model involves nonlinear constraints and objectives which are dependent of different uncertain scenarios and expectations. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) and self-organizing maps (SOMs) approach are implemented to attain appropriate solutions of the model. This proposition will also provide a new perspective for both academia and investors in the biodiesel field.