The History of Biodiesel.

10 August 1893 – In Augsburg Germany, the father of the diesel engine, Rudolf Diesel, runs a single cylinder with a flywheel at it's base for the first time on it's own power. The cylinder was 3 meters long (10 Feet).

1900 – At the World Fair in Paris, Rudolf Diesel wins the Highest Prize for his diesel engine running on peanut oil – a biofuel, not biodiesel because it was not transesterified.

1912 – Rudolf Diesel says: “the use of Vegetable oil for engine fuels may seem insignificant today but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroluem and coal tar products of present time.”

1920's – Diesel engine manufacturers altered their engines to use petroluem diesel rather than vegetable oil because of petroluem diesel's lower viscocity.

1920's & 1930's – Despite of the widespread use of petro-diesel, interest is growing in several countries to use vegetable oils as fuels in engines. Reports of problems occurred due to the high viscosity of vegetable oils compared to petroluem diesel which leads to the coking of injectors and valves. Easy solutions to these problems were found and include among others, heating the vegetable oil, blending with petro-diesel or ethanol, pyrolysis and cracking the oil.

1937 – G. Chavanne of the University of Brussels was granted a patent for the “Procedure for the transformation of vegetable oils for their uses as fuels” The patent describes the process of alcoholysis (also called transesterification) of vegetable oils using ethanol in order to seperate the fatty acids from the glycerol by replacing the glycerol with short linear alcohols.

1977 – A Brazillian scientinst Expedito Parente produced biodiesel using transesterification with ethanol and filed a patent for the process. This process is classified as biodiesel by international norms and set the standard for identity and quality.

1979 to 1983 – South African Agricultural Engineers does research into the use of transesterified sunflower oil and refining it to diesel fuel standards. In 1983, the process for producing fuel quality, engine-tested biodiesel was completed and published internationally.

1987 to 1989 – Austrian company, Gaskoks, obtained the technology from the South African Agricultural Engineers and erected the first biodiesel pilot plant in November 1987. In 1989 they opened the first Industrial scale biodiesel plant with a production capacity of 30,000 tons of rapeseed per year.

1990's to Present – Troughout the 90's biodiesel plants were opened in many European countries and other parts of the world.

In Europe and America there are numerous fuel stations selling biodiesel blends and 100% biodiesel. In recent years many local governments started implementing programs and mandated that all diesel sold must be a biodiesel blend.

In South Africa the government wants 2% biodiesel with all normal diesel sold by 2013 and 5% Ethanol in Petrol.