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Inedible vegetable-oil based biodiesel in Northern Viet Nam 193

4.6 Scenario development
The application of several biodiesel blends was contemplated, including B5,
B10, B20, and B100.

4.7 Sensitivity analysis approach

Sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine and estimate which factors
influence Triple I and its parameters. Several conditions were considered as
follows:
– Fuel price: According to the annual fuel price record and focus of the US
EIA (2017a,b) from 2016 January to 2018 June, the lowest price and high-
est price of fuel were around 20% lower and 15% higher than the current
price of fuel, respectively. Therefore two scenarios were made following
the 20% decrease and 15% increase in fuel prices.
– Regarding Hibiscus yield: The best case was set based on provided data of
some farmers in the north of Viet Nam, the maximum yield of Hibiscus
fruits was 10 tonnes per hectare, 2.2 tonnes of seeds. The worst case was
set following the average lowest yield of one tree reported at the
SATREPS Project annual meeting (Pham, 2016) in other countries, lead-
ing to a 45% decrease in Hibiscus yield.
– Vernicia seed yield: Since the yield of Vernicia strongly depends on the
condition of soil and weather and the rate of male and female flowers in
the tree (Tran, 1996), two scenarios analyzing a 20% increase and decrease
of Vernicia seed yield were made.
– Pongamia seed yield: Two scenarios were made in response to the lowest
Pongamia seed yield of 8kg tree 1 in India (Murphy et al., 2012) and the
1
plantation density of 3000 trees ha in the pilot area in Quang Ninh
Province.
– Many studies claimed that one disadvantage of biodiesel systems was using
diesel for transportation of raw materials and distribution of biodiesel. In
order to see how it affected the system, Pongamia biodiesel production
plant was relocated near its cultivation area that considerably alters the dis-
tances of input material transport and biodiesel distribution.
– Since revenues of the newly developed biodiesel system are expected to
highly depend on several coproducts, the reduction in price and the exis-
tence of those coproducts were also considered in this study.
– The change in conversion factor from economic value to global hectare α
was also considered.