Students cook up alternative fuel

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)