Aspetti tecnici, economici ed ambientali della produzione di biodiesel in Italia

The events of the last years have put under the spotlight the politic and economic instability of the energy sources from crude oil. This has brought to the necessity to exploit alternative sources, such as biofuels. It is possible to suppose for Italy, for a long time dependent from abroad energy supplying, that the development of biofuel industry will be an opportunity, also thanks to its background agriculture: it can rise, in fact, to an important role, thanks to biomass energy exploitation. In this paper will be made an analysis about the material and energy flows of the entire production chain of biodiesel obtained from sunflower, in order to evaluate its potential from technical, economic and environmental point of view