It is currently possible to use vegetable oil fuel to run cars which have been filled with new or suitably modified diesel engines. In this connection, PORIM has experiment on a car fitted with Elsbett vegetable fuel engine and crude palm oil (CPO) has been used exclusively as vegetable oil fuel in the experiment. The experimental car has been running over 35,000km with no technical problems. While more extensive trials on the CPO fuel would be carried out, and we anticipate that CPO can be utilised technically as a fuel, it is the cost of using CPO fuel that will be determining factor for its wide scale adoption as an alternative fuel for the future. In this paper we have attempted to evaluate in a preliminary way, the comparative costs of using the Elsbett engine and the CPO fuel.

Main Researcher:  Dr Yusof Basiron