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When not disposed properly, the frying oil from the household or restaurants may cause clogging of waste drainage pipes and sewage systems, water contamination and soil sealing. The production of biodiesel from frying oil and its utilization for energy generation is a potential alternative to disposal, adding value to this waste and using it as an energy source. This article presents a case study of a proposal to produce biodiesel from frying oil for fuel up vehicles used to the employees transport inside Fiat's plant in Betim, Brazil. Besides the technical and economic evaluation, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to examine the environmental viability of producing the biodiesel from cooking oil and its use for fuel up the minibuses replacing conventional diesel B5 for B50.

With the increase in the market's requirement level and the incited dispute for the consumers, the automotive industry has given special attention to the customer's perceived quality. One of the aspects related to the quality perception is the "new car's smell." The trend, shown by the market, is to control this characteristic in a subjective way, by means of especially trained panel. This paper aims at analyzing this question by another point of view, leaving the subjectivity and searching to characterize the new car's smell in an analytical and concrete way. It was shown that the main VOCs contained in a poly(vinyl chloride) matrix are 2-butanone, acetic acid ethyl ester, toluene, acetic acid butyl ester, cyclohexanone and 1-hydroxycumene. The evaporation rate of the VOCs was studied and its impact in atmospheric global composition evaluated.

All over the world, the combat actions to reduce the vehicles' environmental impacts are focused on reducing emissions during the vehicle use; guiding many companies to work on lighter technologies development without considering its whole life cycle's impacts. It was demonstrated that the knowledge of the whole life cycle of the product under study is fundamental to fully evaluate its benefits and burdens. In this context, life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool for the systems improvement; his entire life cycle approach allows the identification and assessment of critical aspects and may be useful for helping decision makers to develop his products so as to cause the least environmental impact.