Producing biofuel from Litsea tree

Students of Hanoi Architectural University have just had the idea of ​​using Litsea oil to produce biodiesel.

Nguyen Dinh Hai, author of the project 'Biotechnology from Boi Loi' said, from the abundance of fruits of Litsea, after harvesting and through preliminary processing, the fruits are put into the presses to separate oil from fruit. Using diesel production technology, gasoline liters from the first Litsea tree in Vietnam will be born.

Litsea tree leaves.

"Oil produced from Litsea fruit will be cheaper because production is easy to deploy and take advantage of existing natural conditions. On the other hand, waste gas produced by burning fuel will be cleaner, reduce pollution. environment, so the consumption of oil will be simple and favored by consumers, " said Nguyen Dinh Hai.

"Litsea is a woody tree with a lot of oil, the production of diesel oil from fruit trees will bring many benefits such as creating clean fuel sources and protecting the environment , " Hai added.

Hai calculated, on average, one tree per harvest per year is 150kg, when produced, it will recover more than 100 liters of oil equivalent to 2 million VND (minus the cost of producing 1 liter of oil is 3,000 VND).

"The production capacity of the line is 20 tons of oil per month, equivalent to 25,000 liters of oil, the revenue collected each month is 500 million, accordingly after less than 2 years, the capital has been recovered and profitable. If the scale of production of economic resources is expanded, it will be very big. "

The technology chosen by Nguyen Dinh Hai to use in the production of energy from Litsea is HTPM (High Temperature and Pressured Methanol - Methanol - Methanol - Methanol - high pressure) technology that has been patented.

Lubricants and methanol introduced into the environment with high temperatures and pressures at the same time are reasonably calculated by continuous pumping through the heterogeneous catalyst. The catalysts here do not participate in chemical reactions but only help them happen faster.

Then, the process of separation of newly created FAMEs (FAME- fatty acids methyl esters or biodiesel) with glycerol and methanol is carried out by distillation. During the period, methanol will be reused, a mixture of biodiesel (FAME) and glycerol will be separated by centrifugation. In the second phase of distillation, new biodiesel reaches 96.5% purity will be raised to the purest level again.

Hai said, Litsea trees are favored by many birds, when greening the bare land means attracting many birds, diversifying ecosystems. Besides, planting trees will solve jobs for poor households, greening bare land, other resources from trees such as timber for industrial production will increase income for people, contribute to the development of the country.

The project 'Biotechnology from Litsea tree' by Nguyen Dinh Hai is in 9 projects to the final round of the 2011 Green Economy Idea Contest organized by the Green Apple Garden project in collaboration with other units.