• Energy Research
• Restricted close
• Embargo close
• FR close
• Renewable Energy close

This paper discusses the oil palm expansion in the State of Para, located in the Brazilian Amazon. It focuses on land use change aspects put in perspective with the sustainability criteria for biofuels of the European Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The study shows that palm oil production for energy purposes appears very promising in Brazil. In parallel to local targets, the mandatory European biofuel targets represent an important market potential for the country. It seems too early to know whether the export of palm oil biodiesel from Brazil to Europe will be significant or not. However, it is likely that palm oil exports for biodiesel production in Europe occur in the coming years. Although the RED includes some essential conditions for sustainable production of biofuels, we argue that the values imposed for calculating carbon stocks do not reflect diversity of pastureland where oil palm expansion occurs in the Brazilian Amazon. The use of certain land areas authorised within the RED may also represent a significant limit in terms of biodiversity protection. This study provides new insights that may be used to improve life cycle assessment of biodiesel from palm oil in order to avoid unintended policy consequences.

Abstract The need to decrease the consumption of materials and energy and to promote the use of renewable resources, such as biofuels, stress the importance of evaluating the performance of engines based on the second law of thermodynamics. This paper suggests the use of exergy analysis (as an environmental assessment tool to account wastes and determine the exergy efficiency) combined with gas emissions analysis to optimize the performance of a compression ignition (CI) engine using biofuels such as cottonseed and palm oils, pure or blended with diesel for different engine loads. The results show that the combination of exergy and gas emissions analyses is a very effective tool for evaluating the optimal loads that can be supplied by CI engines. Taking into account technical constraints of engines, a tradeoff zone of engine loads (60% and 70% of the maximum load) was established between the gas emissions (NO and CO 2 ) and the exergy efficiency for optimal performance of the CI engine.