(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

According to the Huaxlee website, China expects to make 5 m tonne ethanol by 2010, in a post quoting from the China Daily. It will be fueling the need wtih biomass.
This blog has noted before that China has looked at biofuel from a range of sources including biomass. This volume is interesting enough for foreign players to take an interest in the country. The Huaxlee story is potentially useful for outlining the Chinese biofuel strategy and giving details of how biomass is being used.

More (from The Big Biofuels Blog)…

hi just asking about methanol and where to buy it from in Melbourne. I’m going down there this week and would like to know if we can get it cheaper being a member of the bio fuels forums. Prices will help.

thank you coy.

(automatically updated/inserted from The Envirofuels Blog)

Westport Innovations and PACCAR Australia, the manufacturers of Kenworth trucks, have announced that the companies will develop and commercialise liquefied natural gas (LNG) Kenworth trucks for the Australian market. Kenworth plan to begin factory-installed production in mid-2009 beginning with the T908, K108 and T408SAR truck chassis and roll out across additional models into the future. [...]

Please click this link to read the full article on the Envirofuels website.

(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)

Tidied up

Life on a Myanmar biofuels plantation is explored and found to be pretty rosy in this article from Singapore’s Straights Times. Well it would be, its the Straights Times and its a Singaporean investment. Didn’t look around at any others though… Didn’t explain whether the companies gained the land on the basis of prior informed consent of the locals…

Separately, while we’re on the subject of Myanmar here are some links to the MOU between Myanmar Agri-Tec and South Korea’s Enertech to make biofuel from the Jatropha grown. There’s also a scheme to use the plantation to generate carbon credits… which is forward looking.

More (from The Big Biofuels Blog)…

My son bought a 1990 Hilux Surf with 2.4 turbo diesel engine. We found that the cylinder head, turbo and IP all needed replacing so we fitted a second hand 2.8 (non-turbo) engine instead. Once we had that sorted I did the conversion for him, including a Walbro pusher pump. We found that the pusher pump combined with the gravity advantage of the high mount veg tank resulted in a slight leak from the front of the IP. I removed the pusher pump and the leak stopped. Since then he has done 8,000 km on veg including a trip last weekend, Sydney to Brisbane to Gold Coast to Brisbane (x2) and back to Sydney. All went well on the trip and he was able to carry 9 cubees of oil and did the entire trip on veg. Yesterday he noticed a fuel leak on diesel. This morning, running on diesel, 500 metres from his home, the engine stalled and he had difficulty restarting, so he left it on the street and went to work by train.
This afternoon we managed to get it started on diesel by pumping the priming plunger on the diesel filter. We had to keep pumping to keep it running, stop pumping and the engine stopped. Afterwards there was a large puddle of diesel under the car. After about 5 mins we switched to veg and I pumped that primer for a while then stopped pumping for a while and let it idle. All was well except for a slight drip. Then he drove it 100 km with me following - no trouble, ran perfectly. IP comes off tomorrow and goes to a pump specialist.
I am thinking that the leak (front seal??) is so bad on the low viscosity diesel the the integral lift pump can’t keep up supply pressure to the IP. It is losing too much to the leak but constantly pumping the priming plunger was compensating. Switching to veg (higher viscosity) resulted in a lesser loss and more fuel getting to the pumping plunger and thus injectors.
So here is an example of an IP kept alive by veg.
8,000 km on veg has saved him nearly $2,000 and deferred the cost of IP overhaul for several months.

OR

Another example of damage caused by veg.