This process is achieved by adding methanol to vegetable oil.

What plants are used to make biodiesel. Just as ethanol is blended with gasoline so biodiesel comes in different blends such as B20 or B5. Biodiesel production through chemical technology that is transesterification has been developed and widely used. Some potential candidates included soybeans some varieties of eucalyptus switchgrass and poplar.

Ethanol is a type of biofuel for automobiles that run on nondiesel fuel. Ethanol is the most used because of its low cost however greater. However the majority of the biodiesel production is from energy crops such as palm oil and soybean while waste animal fat and vegetable oils have been proposed as suitable feedstock for biodiesel production only in recent years.

An EU-funded project ENERFISH suggests that at a Vietnamese plant to produce biodiesel from catfish basa also known as pangasius an output of 13 tonsday of biodiesel can be produced from 81 tons of fish waste in turn resulting from 130 tons of fish. Tropical oilseed trees such as oil palm and coconut are used as biodiesel feedstocks in some parts of the world. The first step in making biodiesel is called esterification or the acid stage.

B20 features a mix of 6 to 20 of biodiesel in petroleum diesel. Bransby further asserts that using switchgrass. The process requires a catalyst to increase the rate of the chemical reaction between the methanol and vegetable oil.

According to Auburn University professor David Bransby switchgrass makes an ideal biodiesel plant because it is perennial meaning that one planting can produce numerous crops over the course of several years. It can even be made with recycled restaurant fryer oil. The three substances are mixed together.

Biodiesel can be produced from edible or nonedible seeds of plants. The catalyst used in the creation of biodiesel is an alkaline. The edible oils that can be used for biodiesel production are mahua palm tobacco seed rice bran sesame sunflower barley coconut corn used cooking oil linseed mustard soybean rapeseed groundnut cottonseed pumpkin peanut olive etc.