Vegetable oils are the main feedstock for the production of first genera­tion biofuels, which can offer several CO2 benefits and limit the con­sumption of fossil fuels. Raw vegetable oils consist of fatty acid triglyc­erides, the consistency of which depends on their origin (i. e. plant type) as shown in Table 2. Their production, however, is competing for the cultivated areas that were originally dedicated for the production of food and feed crops. As a result the production and utilization of vegetable oils for biofuels production has instigated the “food vs. fuel” debate. For this reason traditional energy crops (soy, cotton, etc) with low oil yield per hectare are being substituted by new energy crops (eg. jatropha, palm, castor etc).

Catalytic hydrotreatment was explored for conversion of vegetable oils in the early 90’s. The investigation of the hydrogenolysis of various vegetable oils such as maracuja, buritimtucha, and babassu oils over a Ni-Mo/y-Al2O3 catalyst as well as the effect of temperature and pressure on its effectiveness was firstly investigated [16][17]. The reaction prod­ucts included a gas product rich in the excess hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and light hydrocarbons as well as a liquid organic product of paraffinic nature. In more detail these studies showed the conversion of triglycerides into carboxyl oxides and then to high qualityhydrocar — bons via decarboxylation and decarbonylation reactions. Rapeseed oil hy­droprocessing was also studied in lab-scale reactor for temperatures 310° and 360°C and hydrogen pressures of 7 and 15 MPa using three different Ni-Mo/alumina catalysts [18]. These products contained mostly n-hep- tadecane and n-octadecane accompanied by low concentrations of other n-alkanes and i-alkanes [19].