Wednesday, August 29, 2007

[PBN] Coconut Oil fuel Experiences from Bougainville, PNG

Dear Pacific Biofuel Network member,

Below is an update of the very interesting work by Mr. Matthias Horn in
Bougainville, Papua New Guinea utilising coconut oil as a biofuel. Mr.
Horn can be contacted at: matthias@bukametalfab.com.pg


"We are manufacturing the oil for 3.5 years now. For the last year we
had a stable sales of 4000 liter CNO monthly. On top of that we are
using an average of 6000 liters in our own company vehicles.

We are not blending the CNO we sell to our customers, its 100% pure and
we did not have any issues with viscosity in Ind. Injected Engines (in
all our customers vehicles like hilux and cruisers).

Our fleet uses pure oil with the exemption of a brand new fergusson
tractor 72HP and two 6 ton Hino dump trucks - they have 10% kero blend
for the simple reason to lower the viscosity. Main reason is that the
engine are direct injected and when cold started it can cause
carbonizing of the head and raising of engine oil level. We have one
daihatsu 3 ton truck with direct injection and it did 120.000 km on
straight cno without any problems.

Our 3 cylinder deutz genrator is running for more that 10,000 hrs on
straight CNO with a two tank system, we worked out that we have to make
sure that the engine is loaded to around 50 % at any time to avoid
[carbon deposit problems.]

I worked out long time ago that our diesel here is very dirty, it has a
lot of rust, fungus and water. When the water mixes with cno it forms a
mix and if you let it settle for a couple of days you will see that it
seperates with and layer of an emulsion inbetween. That is the stuff we
had to clean out of the tanks, because it clogged up the pick up
strainer in the tank and the fuel filter itself. Our sludge looks
greyish- while compared to your pickup strainer in the photo which is
brownish and comes from shit diesel. Once the more viscous our gets in
the tank it will not give enough fuel [for] the engine to run.

Once we have converted a car we have to be very careful not to get
diesel in the tank, since all the dirt is going to cause disaster in the
whole system. I have to say that our climate here has a temp. range of
lowerst 26 deg C and 34 deg. The highest all year round.

We have opened up a couple of our engines after the use of CNO and could
not find any difference it deposits and wear than you would have in
diesel powered engines. The only mystery I worked out a year ago is a
very small amount of saturated fat in our oil. That has the effect that
the filter gets blocked; you open it up and the paper looks very clean
but the fat has glued it up.

We worked out that if we let the oil sit for longer than 15 days, the
fat will finally sit in the bottom of our storage tanks and we syphon
the good fuel of the top of the tank.

Heating is another way to get around it: I have got a sleeved here which
sits around your fuel filter and you divert the cooling water thru the
sleeve. Have not fitted it yet.

One other fact is the location of your fuel filter, hilux does not give
us any problem (the filter sits in the back of the eng. Compartment.
Land cruiser the filter sits in the front of the engine. My assumption
is that the air flow while driving cools down the flter and the fat does
not melt, once I stop my cruiser and the heat from the engine
radiates the engine picks up again.

I am thinking of putting a sheet metal shield to protect filter from
cooling down while driving and see what the result is. We had our CNO
checked by westfalia in Germany, looking at a centrifuge to clean it,
but they could not find water or solids in our oil and said there
is nothing they can offer to clean it further. To get the fat out of the
cno is the only task, because I do not really like the idea of stuffing
around with the cooling system of the vehicle.

Our customer base is mainly expat people like Ausaid, NZ aid and so on.
The locals, even our mechanic (who does all the work with me) do not
trust the whole idea. They had the was here and lots of people used home
CNO In that time but not very success full in longer terms, because of
quality issues.

Our retail price for CNO is Kina 2.50 compared to K 3.50 what the diesel
here in bougainville costs.

So far, that was a lot of typing......

Hope the info I have given you is of some use.

Regards

Matthias"


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Check for earlier Pacific Biofuel posts: http://pacbiofuel.blogspot.com/

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