*Feasibility of Biodiesel Production in Pakistan DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101967*

environments where water scarcity and extreme temperatures are common. Date palm trees are now grown in semi-arid climates and other parts of the world, including southern Europe, Australia and America. There are now over 100 million date palm trees in the world with around 2000 cultivars [87, 88]. A palm tree produces 500 kg of fresh dates per year on average, with production beginning at 5 years and lasting up to 60 years. Date production and consumption have increased rapidly, from 1.88 million t in 1965 to 3.43 million tons in 1990 and 8.46 million tons in 2016, with Middle Eastern and African countries dominating production [89]. It's a pitted fruit with a seed in the centre surrounded by a fleshy pericarp as shown in **Figure 17**.

The date seeds are very hard ranging from 5 to 15 mm in length with oblong shape with a ventral groove. The weight is about 11–18% of the total fruit mass and contain 4–13% of oil. Based on these digits, an estimated 1.3 million tons of date seeds and 127,000metric tons of date seed oil (similar amount of biodiesel) could be annually produced. In 2015, the total annual production of biodiesel was 38,700 tons in the Middle East and Africa [90, 91]. Date production in the world reached 9.07 million metric tons in 2019, up from 8.4 million metric tons in 2017. Similarly, date palm is widely distributed in different areas of Baluchistan, Sindh, KPK and Punjab. It has been

**Figure 17.** *Date fruit and seeds [87].*

**Figure 18.** *Top 10 global date-producing countries [87].*

reported that the annual production of date seed is around 600,000 metric ton per year in Pakistan [92]. These seeds are used as feed for animals in some areas. However, most of these seeds degrade without any proper utilization. Therefore, the use of date seeds as biodiesel feedstock could be a promising to concern energy solution (**Figure 18**).
