Vietnamese Firm to Make Biodiesel from Catfish Fat
03 July 2006
(Reuters.) Vietnamese catfish processor and exporter Agifish plans to convert catfish fat into biodiesel. Agifish Deputy Director Nguyen Dinh Huan said that the company had been running trials on the fuel, made from fat left over from processing, to run pumps at its fish ponds in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang in southern Vietnam.
The state-run Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper quoted Ho Xuan Thien, the chief engineer of the project, as saying the firm planned to build a 10,000-tonne-per-year (about 3 million gallons) factory in 2007 to mass produce the fuel for domestic markets.
Thien said a kilogram of catfish fat could produce 1.13 liters of biodiesel. Vietnam produces around 30,000 tonnes of catfish annually, mainly for exports to the United States and Europe.
According to the Energy Information Administration, Vietnam has 600 million barrels of proven oil reserves. Crude oil production averaged 370,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2005, down somewhat from the 403,000 bbl/d level achieved in 2004. Although it is a significant oil producer, Vietnam remains reliant on imports of petroleum products due to a lack of refining capacity. Most of Vietnam’s crude oil is exported to refiners in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.
I have heard that biodiesel made from used cooking oil smells like french fries or whatever was cooked. It is interesting to contemplate traveling behind a truck burning catfish based biodiesel.
Posted by: Bill Young | 03 July 2006 at 05:11 AM
Am I reading this correctly? I thought if anything would be done with catfish it would be in Mississippi!
Posted by: John Ard | 03 July 2006 at 07:12 AM
One way or another, fat can be made into biodiesel.
Posted by: allen zheng | 03 July 2006 at 08:29 AM
That would include algae oil.
Posted by: allen zheng | 03 July 2006 at 08:32 AM
yay waste turned into fuel! go homeland go! get rid of those dirty motocyles with no cats! and in vn to buy a car would cost 2 to 3 times MORE than in North America. Overpopulations, no space, and cheap fuel (1 dollar a gallon when i last checked 1 year ago?), but if you own a car your rich period.
and yes every car there is a stick, i did not see one auto when i was visiting my original origins. even though driving in the car, i doubt you'll ever get past 20 mph unless you went on the highway... that's how crowded it is, try driving around motocyles 24/7
Posted by: philmcneal | 03 July 2006 at 01:24 PM
Philmcneal -
I suspect the traffic situation you witnessed in Vietnam is very similar to that in other emerging economies throughout Asia. Driving, never mind parking, must be a nightmare. Initially, the masses buy two-stroke scooters, later they move up to small cars. Something similar happened in Europe in the 50s, the era of the microcar (very cute, but with dirty two-stroke engines):
http://www.microcarmuseum.com/virtualtour.html
These days, safety and emissions laws are much stricter even in emerging economies. Any engine running on locally produced biodiesel has to be a four-stroke based on at least 1990s technology. Note that AVL had developed a three-cylinder 1L turbocharged two-stroke that delivered 54kW @ 3500RPM but abandoned the effort when emissions were tightened.
Four-stroke diesels are too heavy and expensive for a scooter, though there are (German) diesel engine concepts for motorcycles, with plans to add DPFs.
http://www.dieselkrad.info/index.php?main=dieselkrad&detail=high&id=25
http://www.all4engineers.com/index.php;site=a4e/lng=en/do=show/alloc=3/id=3257
One serious drawback of any type of diesel in sunny, humid climates is the NOx emissions. At least biodiesel does not contain sulphur and produces 50% less PM. It would take a visionary politician to reserve traffic lanes for HOVs such as jitneys to ease congestion and, ensure such a law was strictly enforced! The promise of private mobility is just too tempting, even if it cannot possibly be met.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | 03 July 2006 at 05:38 PM
The Japanese should turn whale fat into biodiesel to power there whaling fleet.
Posted by: mango | 03 July 2006 at 08:21 PM
The answer for crowded tropical Asian cities is electric scooters. China is the biggest producer of electric scooters, and eventhough they are underpowered, they are very clean and quiet. The driving distances in these crowded cities aren't very far, so the limited range of these scooters is not a big problem. A123 is now producing nano-tech lithium batteries for hand powered tools and the spec is very promising, including very fast charging and can be recharged thousands of times, up from 300 times of typical cell-phone lithium batteries. Scooters have such small batteries that they can also be swapped in minutes, provided infrastructures for this exist.
As for biodiesel from catfish? And just a meagerly 3 million gallons a year? What a waste of nutrient! Fish oil has a lot of Omega 3 fatty acid and cholesterol-free. A better use would be to fry shrimp-potato chips or egg-rolls with it. yum yum!!
Posted by: Roger Pham | 03 July 2006 at 09:45 PM
Plentiful of diesel motorbykes are developed for use in US, GB, and other militaries. They use unified for all military purposes JP8 jet fuel:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_bikes.html
Note also diesel-electric Kawasaki hybrid motor bike (not yet rolled out).
Posted by: Andrey | 03 July 2006 at 09:50 PM
i interest about biodisel fraom fish i like to do aresearch about ii. wahat do you think the intersisting part thet becom my research objek in fish biodisel
Posted by: henky | 23 February 2007 at 02:09 AM
i interest about biodisel fraom fish i like to do aresearch about ii. wahat do you think the intersisting part thet becom my research objek in fish biodisel
Posted by: henky | 23 February 2007 at 02:17 AM