Price risk management in biodiesel production.

详细信息   

• 作者：Graf ; Johannes Korbinian.
• 学历：Master
• 年：2007
• 毕业院校：University of Arkansas
• 专业：Economics, Agricultural.;Economics, Commerce-Business.
• ISBN：9780549193548
• CBH：1447917
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：3855118
• Pages：65

文摘

This thesis is divided into two journal type article styles. The first journal article analyses the trade-offs between free-fatty acid contents in poultry and different production methods to produce biodiesel in terms of break-even costs. The second journal article analyzes input price risk management of biodiesel inputs by hedging.;Reducing feedstock cost is a key economic factor for the feasibility of biodiesel production. Compared to vegetable oils, animal fats such as poultry fat are relatively inexpensive but their biodiesel yield is more unpredictable due to varying free-fatty acid content of the feedstock. If producers use animal fats, they can choose to (i) use conventional base-catalyzed transesterification and live with the yield loss; or (ii) have the poultry fat custom refined to remove the free fatty acids in the form of soapstock; or (iii) invest in acid pretreatment equipment to esterify free fatty acids to biodiesel. The potential for investment in this equipment is a function of biodiesel yield as well as soapstock byproduct. This study compares and contrasts the latter two methods and thereby provides some investment guidelines for pretreatment equipment.;Due to price volatility in input markets, hedging biodiesel inputs could be of interest to biodiesel producers. Therefore this study examines a hedge between a partial break-even input cost using soybean oil as feedstock and soybean oil futures. Furthermore as futures contracts related to poultry fat are not traded, a cross-hedge between break-even input cost using poultry fat as feedstock and soybean oil futures is analyzed. This analysis could give biodiesel producers more options when trying to minimize input price risk they are exposed to.