All that's needed to start your car is in the kitchen

All that's needed to start your car is in the kitchen

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Amid the government's conservation drive, Trisakti University
students and alumni have discovered a way to utilize used cooking
oil as an alternative to fossil fuel.

The university's School of Engineering students and alumni
have created a converter kit -- called McJelantah, which stands
for Mechanical Diverter/Converter of Jelantah (used cooking oil)
as Diesel Fuel Replacement -- which converts used cooking oil
into a fuel to power diesel engines.

The converter changes the degree of viscosity of used cooking
oil to make it suitable for powering diesel engines.

Project manager Bhudjonggo Prabowo Kartoleksono said the group
of students and alumni aimed to give the poor access to an
affordable and renewable alternative fuel.

"Alternative fuels such as bio-mass and compressed natural gas
(CNG) are expensive. With the converter, all you need to do is go
to the kitchen when you want to start your car. All households
here use cooking oil," he said, adding that even if people had to
buy used oil, the price was only between Rp 1,000 (10 U.S. cents)
and Rp 3,000 per liter.

"It depends on the quality or how many times the oil has been
used," he added.

Prabowo said the idea of designing a converter came after his
group realized that Rudolph Diesel used peanut oil when he
invented the engine, later called the diesel engine after his
name, in 1898.

Another lecturer at Trisakti's School of Engineering, Jurizal
Julian Luthan, who is also an advisor of the project, said the
converter was not only efficient but also environmentally
friendly.

"We have done a series of tests since starting the project in
March. The results show that used cooking oil produces less
emissions," he said.

Tests were conducted on an Isuzu Panther, provided by
authorized Isuzu dealer PT Pantja Motor, and showed that the
emission contained zero carbon dioxide and sulfur.

However, Luthan acknowledged that there was a slight reduction
in the car's performance, particularly a maximum speed, which was
down by 3.5 percent, and a 5 percent to 7 percent reduction in
maximum torque.

"The Panther's top speed is 149 kilometers per hour (kph) but
when it was powered by used cooking oil, it could only run at 115
kph at the fastest," he said.

Prabowo argued, however, that the reduced power should be seen
as a trade off for the reduced level of pollution and fossil fuel
consumption.

Both Prabowo and Luthan said the converter would be available
on the market only after they did an endurance test next month.

"We will test the car's endurance on a 10,000 kilometer trip
and see the affect it has on the engine," Luthan said, adding
that PT Pantja Motor seemed interested in installing converters
in its vehicles.

Prabowo estimated that the converter's market price would be
Rp 4 million once it was mass produced.

"It seems expensive, but imagine if 5 percent of the three
million diesel vehicles in Indonesia used secondhand cooking oil
as fuel, how many kiloliters of diesel fuel we would save," he
said. (006)