CHAPTER 23 Production of Biodiesel Using Palm Oil Man Kee Lam* ,† , Nur Azimah Jamalluddin ‡ , Keat Teong Lee ‡ * Chemical Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Malaysia † Centre for Biofuel and Biochemical Research, Institute for Self-Sustainable Building, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Malaysia ‡ School of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Nibong Tebal, Malaysia 23.1 INTRODUCTION The world is gradually heading toward severe energy crisis due to limited availability of fossil fuels, such as petroleum oil, natural gas, and coal. These fossil fuels are regarded as nonrenewable energy resources that cannot be replaced in a relatively short time after being utilized. Nevertheless, it is an undeniable fact that human is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels for electricity generation, transportation, and societal development. In addition, over exploiting the usage of fossil fuels by human beings has raised several environmental issues and caused severe impacts to the Earth. One of the most critical examples is climate change due to excessive emission of greenhouse gases by burning the fossil fuels. Global warming and extreme weather changes such as sudden drought, flash flood, windstorms, and heat waves are the evidences of climate change. Therefore, the search for alternative and renew- able energy sources has emerged as one of the key challenges in this century in order to pro- tect the environment and creating a sustainable world for the future generation. There are indeed a number of renewable energy sources that have been explored, includ- ing solar, hydropower, wind, wave, geothermal, and nuclear energy. However, most of these alternatives are not economically feasible due to the requirement of high capital and operat- ing cost that has limited its usage in many countries. Furthermore, availability of these renew- able energy sources is highly dependent on regional or local condition that can be very unpredictable and inconsistence. For example, solar collector would require clear sky and plenty of sunlight to generate sufficient amount of energy and thus, it is certainly not an ap- propriate choice for temperate countries. The hybrid energy conversion system is recommended to overcome the problem and to achieve satisfactory energy conversion effi- ciency. Nevertheless, developing a hybrid energy system is complicated as the technology 539 Biofuels: Alternative Feedstocks and Conversion Processes for the Production of Liquid and Gaseous biofuels # 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816856-1.00023-3