Biokerosene from Vegetable Oils – Technologies and Processes

Large amounts of the world wide used biofuels are derived from vegetable oils; this is especially true for bio-aviation fuels. Biokerosene from vegetable oils can be produced by various processes. Three of these processes, namely the HEFA (hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids) and the BIC (biofuels iso-conversion) process as well as the co-refining in crude oil refineries, will be presented and discussed below. Therefore after a short introduction addressing the vegetable oil provision chain including different types of biomass and the different pretreatment steps to fulfill the requirements of further processing the production pathways to provide biokerosene via the different processes named above will be described. In this context a brief overview of each process is given, before each conversion step is described in detail. In the end a final consideration and a brief outlook on the future role and extend of biokerosene derived from vegetable oils is given.