Sustainability aspects of biobased products : comparison of different crops and products from the vegetable oil platform

This study focusses on the production of vegetable oil based products. A limited number of aspacts of the sustainability of the full chain (from agriculture to product at the factory gate) was evaluated. Three different vegetable oils were taken into account: palm oil, soy oil and rapeseed oil. Also three different products made from vegetable oil were evaluated: biodiesel, polyol (a raw material for production of PU foams) and resin. In the present study, sustainability of these products was evaluated through the following parameters: Non-Renewable Energy Usage (NREU) (GJ per ton of product); Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions (ton CO2-equivalent per ton of product); Land use (ha/ton vegetable oil) and NREU and GHG emission avoided (GJ or ton CO2-equivalent per hectare of land).