Police chief Senior Supt. Gilbert Cruz of the Makati - Philippine National Police (PNP) said that they have started feeding their diesel patrol vehicles with biodiesel from Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) donated by restaurants. 40% of the fuel from their tanks will be composed of the WVO biodiesel.
WVO biodiesel is biodiesel created from used cooking oil. The processing of WVO has additional steps because the oil is tainted with animal fats, water and other impurities when it was used in the cooking process. It usually requires an ample amount of cooking the WVO before dropping the catalyst in order to melt the hardened oil as well as to evaporate the water found in the oil. I think one way to reduce the cost of heating the oil is to use natural means, such as solar cookers.
Specialists from the Mapua Institute of Technology have a small plant which converts the WVO for them. With 10 mobile cars, they save up to half a million a month by tanking up with WVO biofuel.
According to him also, one full tank worth 60 liters, costs P3,459 at P57.65 per liter. With 40% WVO their price for a full tank of gas is now at P2,490.48. Doing the math, the boys of MIT can produce WVO Biodiesel at a cost of P17.29/liter.
This post is quite timely as I was already thinking of writing a post on the possibility of creating city wide WVO processing plant. Where people can bring in their WVO for processing, they could get paid in either biodiesel or cash. It would be useful for fast foods joints who consume a lot vegetable oil in their cooking. This could prove to be a very good business model.
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Category: Biodiesel, WVO
August 8th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I’m afraid the Makati Police Dept is putting their diesel vehicles at risk. Aside from the adequacy of the repurification of the WVO before it can be converted to biodiesel I am apprehensive that the process is not sophisticated enough to ensure that the biodiesel output will up to Philippine National Standards. This project is on the scale of backyard biodiesel-making which typical does not purify the methyl ester enough to remove all the excess moisture, glycerine, methanol and other materials that can compromise the engine. Excess moisture and fatty acid will lead to corrosion, excess methanol will affect combustion, and excess glycerine will gum up in the engine over time. The effort is good publicity but it could do more harm than good.