Researchers from India have made bio-diesel from Castor oil by alkaline trans-esterification process and assessed it’s physio-chemical properties for locomotive engine based fuel applications.The experimentation with Castor bio-diesel showed promising results for the parameters studied and performed on par with the conventional diesel.They further claimed that by converting 10% of the total production of Castor oil to bio-diesel can minimize the global carbon-dioxide emissions by 79,782 tonnes per annum with zero carbon footprint.

For further reference:http://www.springerlink.com/content/u8535p22463r8377/