The presented work analyses the feasibility of biodiesel production by transesterification of vegetable oil extracted from Cynara Cardunculus. The performance assessment of a plant with a capacity of 5000 t/year biodiesel production is carried out based on its rigorous simulation in AspenHysys (R). A modular automated evaluation tool programmed in Matlab (R) retrieves the inventory of the energy and material inputs/outputs, and the environmental releases from the simulation results. The simulation performs a combined acid-catalyzed pretreatment and alkali-catalyzed transesterification based on the cardoon oil characterization and the kinetic data extracted from published experimental studies. The performance of the plant is optimized considering four potential alternatives. The Eco-indicator 99 methodology is used for the impact assessment, achieving similar results to other vegetable sources of biodiesel. With respect to the economic study, a profitability analysis yields better results than the reported in previous works for oils of other agricultural crops, identifying two critical factors: the biodiesel sale price and the plant capacity. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.